


twisting to the sun and the moon

by jmcats



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Barebacking, First Love, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, and a cheap excuse for a bunch of smut, and pretty imagery, plus overly horny niall and harry, sort of fluffy with a side of angst, young!Zayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:02:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1704104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmcats/pseuds/jmcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And this boy is </i>just a fuck,<i> right?</i><br/>Just a distraction, an excuse to focus on anything but the world hanging over his head.<br/>He’s just a smooth, pliant body between cold sheets under a galaxy of stars and this endless pressure that Liam keeps avoiding.  Or this little ache under his skin from a heartbreak he can’t quite forget.</p><p>(re: Liam has three simple, non-negotiable rules when it comes to one-offs.  And he doesn't ever fall for someone he associates with hotel sheets and lust.  But this <i>kid</i>, Zayn, twists things inside of him he's not expecting.  Suddenly, the rules don't make any sense at all.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	twisting to the sun and the moon

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came from a (naughty) dream I had months ago and an idea I've been holding onto for awhile. It's a little different from what I planned but, hopefully, it's still a decent read. It's a little canon and a little AU. And it's my "Carve Your Kisses In My Skin" in a darker way, okay? Be gentle.
> 
> WARNING: There's quite a bit of smut in here. Also, yes, Zayn is younger in this fic. It's all fiction so I'm not sure of the legal matters and what not but it's just for pure fun, okay? But this fic is definitely for all of the people who wanted a young!Zayn/older!Liam fic... enjoy?
> 
> Title borrowed from Bon Iver's lyrics in "Re: Stacks"

They’re crowded around a table at their favorite Chinese takeaway location at the edge of London at the start of April.  The streets are a shiny black from the morning storm and the sun is a dull drop of melting caramel, almost unrecognizable in the distance when Liam looks up at his three favorite boys with a smile.  The warm heat from the humid, foggy sky slicks his skin while they pass around cartons of steamed and fried rice – Harry picking out all of the vegetables with a plastic fork while Niall steals all of the shrimp with bare fingers – and glossing their lips with varied sauces over beef and chicken.  Liam takes small sips of green herbal tea – not quite to his liking but Harry is so _indulgent_ in cultural tradition – and he takes them all in with a crooked grin, the tang of sweet and sour over his tongue.

He thinks now, after three years of recording and touring and _‘the biggest boyband in the world,’_ he couldn’t quite live without Harry’s boring stories or Niall’s contagious laughter or Louis’ loud, loud plots for world domination.  Even while around an old wooden table, sharing salty noodles and spare pieces of spicy chicken, he knows all of their touching limbs – their pressed together ankles, knocking elbows, a free hand over the nape of a neck – is just a little reminder that this silly little idea of Simon Cowell’s to put them in a group in a competition they weren’t meant to win just might’ve been a tiny bit genius –

And he can’t quite get over how people still give them funny looks and how any lead singer in some _hipster band_ with an acoustic guitar, pointless eye makeup and poetic lyrics still asks _‘what is a One Direction?’_ even though they’ve won two Brits and topped the charts in America and _have met the Queen, fuck you very much._

Still, times like this remind him that he’s more in love with Niall’s freshly dyed hair – from a box of platinum blonde that swore to look almost silver – and Harry’s large hands stealing the tea and Louis’ sea glass eyes that he stares into just to pick out the freckles of green in them.

“Why do we still come here?” Louis asks when they’re quiet for too long, trading looks around the table.

“Its tradition,” Niall and Harry say together with their mouths full and stupid smirks.

Liam shrugs, stifles a laugh into his fist when Louis refuses to argue immediately.

Louis uses his chopsticks to pick up his meat before humming, “But there’s better sushi at that one place down by Knightsbridge that Harry loves and – “

“You got us kicked out of there, remember?” Harry offers with a stern expression that doesn’t convince any of them.

“I did not,” Louis argues with a pout, “That was Niall.  He had too much sake – “

“That you bought,” Liam puts in, grinning when someone – probably Louis – kicks his ankle under the table.

“And there’s that beautiful place with the screens – “

“They’re called shoji – “

“Prick,” Louis grins at Harry, sticky fingers snatching away his tea, “If you’re quite finished – “

Harry sticks his pink, pink tongue out and Liam swears Louis reaction is to blush but he’s calm and determined with his scowl.

“ – I don’t see why we, a successful group from an even more successful talent show, stick to such primitive dining,” Louis fusses, even while feeding Niall pork from his fingers and tangling spare fingers in Harry’s thick mane.

Harry sighs contently, wiggling bare toes – because his boots were kicked off under the table five minutes into their trip here – over Liam’s ankle while Niall orders up a beer and more teriyaki sauce.

“Tradition,” he mumbles while Harry howls his agreement.

“Because,” Liam drags out just for the dumbfounded look Louis gives him, “we’re just a bunch of lads, remember?  Nobody important.  That’s what we told each other the night we were voted off – “

Louis groans but finishes, “And we said we’d always just be a bunch of normal guys who eat Chinese food and watch bad porn.”

“Horrible porn,” Harry cheers with the first five buttons of his plaid shirt undone and all of the new ink across his chest christened by shiny ointment.

“Cheap porn with tasteless music – “

“Like the shit we sing,” Louis snickers lowly and avoids Harry’s swatting hand, winking at his discontent.

“And cheesy blondes who choke on cocks and scream like it’s their first orgasm,” Niall announces in this triumphant tone like he did that first night they made it into the qualifiers, crooked grin to match.

“If only all of the screaming girls could see us now,” Liam says under his breath but he refuses to hide his smile when three sets of fond eyes fall on him.  “We’re awful.”

“And yet they’d still willingly blow us off in the middle of an arena with a thousand screaming viewers,” Harry beams, shoving the thick fringe off his forehead with long fingers and gleaming rings.

Liam ignores the fist to jaw motion Niall does in the background to focus on the thick drops of rain coating the windows, splashing about the sidewalks when the cabs drive by.  He chews his bottom lip and thinks of home – not London, Wolverhampton – and how Loki always, always stares out the window of his parents’ home on rainy weekends while Liam engrosses himself in missed Premier League games with his father wedged on their small couch next to him.  His breath hitches with the ache and he knows they’re set for another six-month tour with too little stops by home and far too many nights in a small bunk watching the dark roads meld together.

“The last girl that gave my willy a nice suck,” Niall starts but Harry clears his throat while Louis laughs manically.

“Are we certain she was a bird?” Louis teases, taking a few sips of Niall’s beer in-between wheezing breaths, “She had an extra bit of hair under her chin.”

“Fuck off,” Niall barks with positively no spite, “she had tits and strawberry-flavored chapstick and her pussy was brilliant.”

“Gross,” Harry groans, almost launching into Louis’ lap with a shiver but he buries his head under Louis’ strong jaw instead.

“I hate you lot,” Niall huffs, careening into Liam and instinct shoves into Liam’s system until he curls an arm around Niall’s shoulders to remove the pout from his pink mouth.

They trade stories about their time off and rehearsals in the meantime, in the aftermath of sex talk – everyone except Liam’s favorite subject because he was the only one who managed a _relationship_ , if that’s what you call what he and Danielle had, between studios and stages and the _‘we are going to conquer the world, lads, wait and see’_ Simon swore – before reducing to low laughter and chats about their favorite restaurants across Europe – a _Must Have List_ , as Louis calls it, to calm them from all of the adrenaline and little pieces of home they know they can’t carry with them.

It’s in the middle of one of Harry’s characteristically long tales – with that dull, sleepy-heavy tone even though he’s wide awake with bright, bright green eyes – that Liam finds a boy curled into a corner booth with thick, dark fringe swept over his forehead, black-rimmed glasses, a loose hoodie and a sketchbook pressed into his lap.  His skin is that soft hue of sandy beaches and there’s a sprinkling of stubble just under his sharp jaw, strong cheekbones almost defined in the baby fat.

He leaves Liam a little breathless – and with sweaty palms, a gallop to his heart, a shiver underneath his bones – and when he tilts his head up, there’s a crinkle to his brow and a frown pushed over sugary pink lips.

There’s a dull laugh in his ear from Niall that he almost doesn’t recognize, not with the unsteady collide of his heart and his chest.  He’s not their age – not with that soft skin, the shine of his lips, the buoyancy still in the way his muscles move – and Liam thinks to look away immediately –

Except he _can’t_ , or he won’t.

He watches the boy’s eyes drop back to his drawing, the smudges of lead across the side of his palm and his tongue caught between his teeth when he concentrates is so amusing.  He’s got an awkward sway to his shoulders that barely coincides with the Bruno Mars in the background but it forces a small laugh out of Liam, one he buries into the sleeve of his leather jacket and he jerks away when Louis pokes at his shoulder with narrowed eyes.

“Are you paying attention?” Louis inquires with a hiss.

“Of course.”

“Liar,” Niall cackles between bites of saucy noodles, “Or you would’ve told _Harold_ – “

“S’not my name,” Harry chants like the song with a scrunched brow, wrinkled nose.

“ – to quit talking about that last bird he went down on in Tokyo.  The one from Spain with the gorgeous skin and huge tits and – “

“She sounded like a hound in heat when she was close,” Louis giggles, still half-swallowed in Harry’s arms and jaw.

Harry smirks with unavoidably crimson cheeks.  “I gave her a high-five afterwards and had security escort her out.”

“And then pleaded to borrow my laptop to wank off to Kylie Minogue an hour later,” Niall adds with this rush of laughter that sounds like birds chasing the wind across a summer beach.

Liam scratches at the nape of his neck with dull nails and avoids the suspecting looks Louis keeps giving him like he’s waiting for Liam to give himself away but Liam’s always, always been better than Louis at poker –

And he fondly remembers a particularly long December night of vodka shots, strip poker, and chasing a drunken sixteen year old Harry Styles through the streets of Cheshire with wild laughter and Louis snapping pictures on his phone with the flash on.  The glare of the light off of Harry’s bare arse is still his favorite in Louis’ personal collection.

His heart hammers out an unfamiliar tune when he looks up again and catches the boy passing their table, giving them subtle looks like he _knows_ but is a little ashamed to admit it.  He fixes his hair instead, tucking the sketchbook under an arm and shuffling away rather than closer to ask for an autograph or a picture –

Or the spare key to Liam’s hotel suite because, _yes_ , Liam would invite him up and kiss the frown off his pretty lips and mark his skin another hue with just his mouth.

“No, Hazza, El is not into letting me put it in her arse, you dolt,” Louis moans, knocking Harry away with a laugh.

“But you told me about that one time – “

Louis shrieks while Niall sputters on his beer.  “Fuck you Styles, you were not supposed to remember that.  And it took too much lube and convincing to ever go there again.”

Liam rolls his eyes instantly, sinks down into his chair a little but can’t help the little looks he keeps shooting to the front counter where the boy is pressed against with a disinterested expression.  There’s a beat-up pack of Marlboro’s sticking out of his pocket and a few expensive ink pens, a Sharpie or two, scraps of charcoal that stain fingerprint-shaped marks across the side of his loose joggers.  He’s got nice shoulders, a lithe frame that, suddenly, Liam wants between his hands to see how much pressure he can take and how hard he could push back and –

He swallows, scratches his fingers over the table and shifts in his chair to hide his erection.

He’s just some boy, too young to think of in that way and too broody to bother with a _hello_ or _I was just wondering if_ because, no, Liam’s not interested.

Not before a tour.  Not as an in-between.  Not at all.

But something floats in his bloodstream like _‘maybe a one-off’_ and he’s never been one for things like that.  He’s never been characterized as the _‘good boy,’_ not like Niall has the world fooled into believing, but he’s called things like _‘reasonable’_ and _‘sensible’_ and he hates all of those terms and adjectives.  Because he’s rough and naughty and everything else the public refuses to see him as.

And this boy with the cheekbones and the smooth skin and the –

“Fuck,” comes out of his mouth and Liam seizes up at the sweet accent, the fist pounding over the counter and teeth twisting a pink lip swollen.

“I forgot the quid me mum gave me for dinner,” the boy says with a lowered head, a fierce wrinkle to his brow, “She’s gonna kill me.  And I haven’t got time to catch the tube back home before me sisters get back from classes – “

“Mr. Malik,” the kind young attendant says soothingly from behind the counter, playful with her smile in a way that Liam is not jealous of –

But he’s not certain how to explain this hot feeling in his blood or the way his heart jumps at the thought that they’ve fucked before.  That she might be a _before-Liam-Payne_ that he can’t quite get over and what the –

The boy sighs, shaking his head.  “Don’t call me that.  That’s me _baba_.  Just Zayn – “

“Zayn,” she repeats and Liam mouths it quietly like a blessing, like a prayer, “You know your mum is a regular customer here.  Surely she can pay on her next visit.”

There’s still a tilt to the boy’s chin, a shaky hand and teeth squeezing the blood from his bottom lip.

“No, I don’t wan’ her to think ‘m irresponsible.  Not after the last time,” he groans, pushing the stacked up boxes of food and containers of steaming soup back at her.  “S’not right.”

Something awful explodes through his nerves and he thinks he sees the warning – like a traffic light, a caution sign, a gust of wind before a fucking tornado – but ignores all of it to excuse himself from their table, pleading a bathroom break, before he’s closing the short distance between table and counter and sidling up next to Zayn.

He flashes a genuine smile – not like the one he uses for teen magazine photo shoots or press releases or album covers – at the boy and yanks out his wallet.  He slides the attendant his card and scribbles off his name on the receipt – and a spare one for the girl’s little sister – before half-turning to Zayn with smeared blush on his cheeks.

Zayn blinks at him and he’s always wished he was good at things like this.  He wishes he was cheeky like Harry is or charming like Niall could be or massively forward like Louis always is.  But, no, he’s not.  He’s the stammering kid at the back of the class who knows half of the answers and hates too much attention when he doesn’t have three other boys attached to his hip.

He tilts his head to the side a little, scrubbing his knuckles over his morning scruff, and his mouth curls into an unbearably large grin when Zayn bites a little gentler at his lip.  He ignores the thunder in his heart – and his shaky hand – to stretch his arm toward Zayn and mumbles, “Hi.”

Niall’s always told him his chat up lines are horrid, forgettable but something sinks into hazel eyes and fingers wrap loosely around his hand and he tightens his grip for assurance when Zayn stiffens at their touch.

“’m Liam,” he says in his best attempt at casualness, trying to steady the stammer in his voice.  “I thought maybe – “

“You didn’t have to,” the boy huffs, sounding annoyed and embarrassed with his chin tilted downward.  He’s looking at the space between his feet, dragging his hand away too quickly but, just over the music, he says, “I’m Zayn and I know who you are.”

Liam smiles helplessly, catches the strong hint of flush to Zayn’s cheeks before his eyes shoot up and he quickly stutters, “I mean, I know because of my sisters.  They follow your stuff.  They’re so in love with the band.  Especially – “

“Harry,” Liam beams but something stops cold in his blood when Zayn shakes his head, teeth still chewing the flesh from his lip.

“No, I was gonna say _you_ ,” Zayn admits, shuffling his feet over the cheap tiling, curling a paper menu between his fingers.  “They’ve watched you since the first time you were on that show.”

“X-Factor,” Liam says under his breath, slightly abashed when Zayn nods back, slowly.

“I know the name,” Zayn says with this matter-of-factness that distracts Liam from the gentle skin around his chin, the stretch of his neck in that massive hoodie.  “I wanted to audition.  I mean, I could’ve but I overslept.”

Liam grins, swallows a laugh when Zayn adds _‘three times’_ softly in the background of the white noise filling the spaces between their bodies.  Something curves around the corners of Zayn’s mouth, almost shy and unconvinced, and Liam’s mind drifts on the oxygen not getting to his lungs –

He thinks about swallowing this boy to the root, on achy knees from too many tour rehearsals with charcoal-stained fingers against his scalp and pleas serrating a lethal tongue when Liam teases the head and the shift of thighs around his ears.

Liam gazes off past Zayn to the sketchbook sitting lazily on the counter, to a half-sketch of Steve Rogers and the fuzzy texture between his fingers lights up like his smile.

“D’ya draw that?” he asks when Zayn tries to cover it with his palm, tries to cover his blush by ducking his head and Liam bites that abashed grin on his own lips when Zayn looks up sheepishly.  “It’s quite good.  Have you seen _the Winter Soldier_ yet?”

Zayn shakes his head with his teeth catching his lip again and Liam imagines _Bucky_ would’ve probably been Zayn’s favorite part of the film.  He’s not sure why and his vision gets a little hazy when Zayn sputters a half-smile, fanning those long lashes over high cheekbones when he looks away.

“Haven’t had a proper chance,” Zayn explains, his voice slightly hard around the edges like he’s trying too hard to be tough.  It’s admirable if not a bit theatrical – and Liam imagines Louis would have a good laugh at that.

The Plain White T’s fill in the gaps between their silence, the awkward looks they give each other and Liam swears, when he was younger, he was better at flirting or chatting someone up but Zayn’s defensive, a little off-putting with his hunched shoulders and tight flex of his jaw.  He’s creasing his bottom lip with his teeth and shifting a little anxiously like he wants to get away –

And part of him wishes Zayn wanted to sneak away into the space between his arms for a kiss, maybe something desperate and hot in the loo but still.

He shakes that off when Zayn reaches for his bags, bundles everything up in one hand to snatch up his sketchbook with free fingers.

“Thanks,” he mumbles with his eyes still lowered, “I should go.  It’s a long ride back home and me mummy will be quite arsed if I bring home cold food for dinner.”

Liam smirks, arms across his chest with a hip cocked against the counter.  “Everyone likes cold Chinese.”

Zayn snorts, huffs a breath to knock the fringe out of his glasses before scooting away.  There’s a vulnerable twist to his shoulders, his jumper hiding most of his torso but Liam can still make out the lines and contours beneath the cotton.  He feels a little voyeuristic, something like a creeper but he tilts his head a little to make out Zayn’s bum in his joggers and the tone of his forearms before inhaling a sharp breath – _courage_ , he tells himself.

“Wait,” he calls with a strangled voice that he’s certain Niall or Louis would take a piss at if they weren’t already serenading Harry with an off-key rendition of some George Michael’s song.

He scurries closer to Zayn, helps him with the bags cutting the circulation from his fingers before suggesting, quietly, “Maybe you could get your sisters up to the city for a book signing we have this evening.  Just some stupid affair for this book that s’ppose to be about our time on the show and the last tour.  I’ve got two spare tickets and – “

Liam holds his breath, fumbles a smile to disguise the tint of his cheeks when Zayn eyes him a little warily.  He clears his throat roughly to strip away the nerves and he tries not to pay attention to the way their knuckles brush.

It’s just a bait, right?  He’s not trying to invite Zayn up for a drink or dinner or a romantic getaway to that gorgeous island offshore Harry pointed out in a silly brochure weeks ago.

He’s not interested, at all.  Not in things like that.  Maybe just a casual snog or getting this quiet boy off in a corridor or just –

Liam watches Zayn cock his head sideways, hates the way those stupid crinkles form around his own eyes when he smiles too hard, when his cheek start to burn under Zayn’s doubtful stare.

“My mum probably wouldn’t let them go.  They’re too young,” Zayn says, stumbling back a little when their pinkies almost catch – _almost_ – before adding, “But since I’m seventeen now, maybe I can go?  Just to get summat signed for them, maybe a picture?  Bring my mate Danny along.”

He’s a little defenseless when he smiles at Zayn, nods.  He pulls two crinkled passes from his back pocket, the ones he was saving for some radio giveaway or some random fan in the wet streets, pushes them between Zayn’s fingers with a crooked grin that he can’t quite take back.  But Zayn wrinkles the passes up when he shoves them into his own pocket and blinks at Liam like he doesn’t quite understand the kindness or the effort and Liam forgets to breathe when Zayn shrugs with a quirk to his lips.

“Thanks,” he mutters with a lowered head, with long eyelashes hidden by his glasses and spun-gold skin and a peek of dark ink up his forearm that Liam catches when he adjusts his sleeve.

Zayn ducks out of the restaurant and Liam can’t quite get comfortable in his seat again, not even with Niall’s laugh buried in the crook of his neck and Harry’s long fingers wrapped around his wrist and Louis’ feet in his lap.  He just stares at the door, at the broad drops of rain, at a city alive with something new.

“Oh Leeymo,” Niall coos with messy lips from the sauce and a tender croon to his voice, “Always the hero.”

Harry smirks, steals the rest of Liam’s rice and passes over a fortune cookie.  “The _sensible one_ , always.  It’s why we love you.”

Louis nods, shuffles a little closer until they’re just a tangled mass of indiscernible limbs and, suddenly, he feels like he’s drowning in them rather than floating.

“Daddy Direction,” Louis teases between sloppy kisses to Harry’s cheek and reading off his fortune, “That kid is lucky you came along, Payner.”

Liam exhales softly, looks down at all of the ink-work scattered across their skin like a map that tells the story of their many adventures.  He thinks Louis’ completely wrong, though.  He’s an idiot.

Somewhere, in the pit of his stomach, he thinks one day he’ll wake up and realize _he_ was the lucky one.

But not now.

 

|*|

 

 _‘I’m seventeen now’_ is all he thinks about the whole car ride to the venue.

He stares out a glassy window streaked in rain and ignores his phone and only harmonizes parts of Usher with Louis with his fingers scratching impatiently at the frayed bits of his jeans.

It’s distracting and he knows it shouldn’t be.  Zayn probably won’t even show.  And he doesn’t really fancy quiet, defensive boys with long eyelashes, sugary pink lips, nimble fingers.  He likes broad shoulders and strong legs and reflexive fingers that can push back when he wants to get rough.  He likes a good conversation and cups of tea in the rain and fucking his name off of someone’s lips and Zayn is –

He’s _beautiful_ and _heartbreaking_ and definitely much more than all of those other things.

Liam can’t focus on the rest – his age, his demeanor, the way he still looks a little insecure with himself like Liam was when he was seventeen.

But he’s not anymore.  And he doesn’t know why he considers the age difference, how _twenty-one isn’t_ that _far from seventeen_ and how, somewhere, it’s legal and how he still wants to pull this boy apart with his lips and tongue and cock because –

Because something behind those glasses, those thick eyelashes, that smile says Zayn wouldn’t mind.

“Nervous?” Niall teases over the noise, over Harry’s chatting with security and Louis’ wobbly vibrato and the hum of the radio.

Liam bites at his lip with a _yes_ on his lips but not because of the fans or the cameras or the constant attention.

Maybe, just a little, because of some boy with dark hair and soft skin and an intensity behind his eyes.

He carefully cups a hand over his cock, bites at his lip with a little more enthusiasm to distract himself, watches the rain soften the hard lines of the city and he convinces himself that all of this means nothing.

 

|*|

 

_Nothing at all._

 

|*|

 

“Fuck,” Harry groans when they’re being shuffled inside from the pelting rain and waiting in some dim hallway with security on each end.

They’re huddled together like they are pre-show, always touching and blinking at each other and trying to contain their smiles when Harry shoves the damp curls out of his eyes and Louis helps him fix them behind his ear before he adds, “I need a proper shag tonight.  Something to take off the edge.”

“That’s always your excuse,” Niall laughs, scooting a snapback over his mussed blonde hair while Liam passes out their Sharpie’s.

Harry shrugs, pressed to a wall with skintight jeans and a loose vintage band shirt and heavy boots.  He curls arms around Louis’ neck from behind – overly-affectionate like they always are even if Liam is almost certain nothing has ever happened between the two, not that Harry didn’t try in the beginning – and snuggles to his damp skin to breathe out, “But I _need_ it, man.  We’re almost on tour and you know what that means.”

“Bad takeout every night?” Louis offers with a smirk, tipping his head back to give Harry a proper view of his ocean-like eyes.

“Smaller spaces to wank off in?” Niall puts in, knocking his hips against Liam’s in their narrow space.

“No sex,” Harry whines a little too loudly, drawing attention from the PR reps and the half-dozen management personnel who only ever show up for events like this.

Niall gasps in mock-horror while Louis’ lips twist into a smile, fingers curling around the ink across the back of Liam’s wrist.

“He’s so dramatic,” Louis teases quietly and Harry’s offended glare says what the rest of them are thinking – _how dare he?_ – but Liam ignores it all to focus on the hundreds of fans chanting their names in the background.

“That’s only because you’ll probably invite El up and have a quickie between sets when you think all of us aren’t paying attention,” Niall declares, dropping his cheek on Liam’s shoulder.

Harry snorts, squeezes his arms tighter around Louis’ neck to whisper, “And you never invite me up to watch.”

Something bright and ruddy burns over Louis’ cheeks and he whimpers when Harry shifts his hips in a filthy motion that’s mostly covered by Louis’ curvy waist.

“We don’t invite guests into our sex life, thanks,” Louis laughs, snuggling his cheek to Harry’s and the flesh is colored a pretty pink from Louis’ stubble.

“Still waiting on the sex tape.”

Niall whimpers, scrubs his cold nose over Liam’s birthmark and they giggle together in the small space until all of this feels normal again.

Liam’s trying to shake off the adrenaline, the rush he always gets before walking onto the stage or performing for a small crowd or at silly meet-and-greets like this one when Harry sidles up to add, “But, like, I need to get off with something other than my hand tonight, okay?  Let’s all go out like the old times – “

“When you were too young to get into clubs?” Louis interrupts with a twist to his lips.

“And you’d sneak me in for cranberry and vodkas?” Harry shoots back with a manic grin.

“Anne still hasn’t forgiven me,” Louis sighs, trying to fix his hair while sliding into a neat blazer.

Harry puts on a dreamy smile meant just for Louis – because, underneath it all, he’s still incredibly devoted to that friendship the started long before the four of them became brothers on a big, big stage – before replying, “But she still loves you.”

Louis smirks back with that cherry hue in his cheeks, quick fingers dragging through Harry’s soft curls and their first single booming from the cheap speakers out front.  Liam looks away when Louis mouths _‘the way you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed’_ because it’s a tiny bit pathetic and far too saccharine for him to tolerate but that’s always, always been Harry and Louis.

“We shall find a proper bird to relieve your pre-tour stress, sweetheart,” Louis promises with a grin that’s two-thirds sinful and one-fourth sincere.

“Me too,” Niall cheers, cuddling closer.

“Leeymo?”

Liam shrugs, cocks his head back against the wall and feels his heart sped up when the crowd starts chanting words that he wrote somewhere between the first and the last album.

“Not really in the mood, lads,” he confesses to groans and frowns and Louis flicking his forehead in retaliation.

“You twat,” Louis hisses, pulling a face that’s more laughable than it is threatening.  “How are we supposed to – “

“But Liam,” Niall interjects with a whine, clawing with bitten nails at Liam’s arm, scratching at the four chevrons like a reminder –

Stretched out in a leather chair with his boys surrounding him, encouraging him in some form of solidarity with a needle pressed to his skin and _‘Danielle was just a preview, man.  She is not your defining moment.  She’s not us,’_ Harry swore afterwards while Louis dried his eyes and Niall fed him homemade chicken soup and Liam remembers rubbing at the sore skin for hours and smiling at that thought alone.

“You’re our wingman,” Harry groans with wide eyes.

Liam snickers, shaking his head.  “The Tommo is brilliant at – “

“At making sure I _don’t_ get laid,” Harry argues, even with arms curved around Louis’ waist and his lips tucked under Louis’ jaw.

“How dare you – “

“S’true,” Niall replies casually, shrugging and messing up Louis’ hair again.  He laughs, ducks a fist and latches onto Liam like _‘protect me’_ is on the verge of crossing his tongue.  “Remember that time in Germany?”

“She was horrible,” Louis squeaks, pressing his hips into Harry’s.  “Said she was into whips and leather and poor, poor Hazza.”

“There was that one girl in Sweden,” Liam adds, scrubbing fingers under Niall’s snapback to catch on thick blonde locks.

“She wasn’t interested in his cock,” Louis pouts.

“No but you stopped me from fingering her off at the back of the bus,” Harry puts in, dragging strawberry lips across Louis’ throat.

“She was _filming you_.”

“The triplets in Manchester?” Harry inquires with an arched eyebrow, eyes like a field of sunflowers.

Louis groans, turns away – further into Harry’s arms – and there’s something apologetic on his tongue but he says, “You wouldn’t share with Niall.  Wasn’t fair.”

Harry drowns his laughter in Louis’ hair and Niall gives his arm a sympathetic rub while Liam stares affectionately at the three of them.  They stop begging him for a night out and offer him half-hugs like he needs them, like he’s still not over Danielle or because they’ll try later to convince him otherwise.  He knocks a foot against Louis’ while wedged between them and ignores their discussions about which Disney princesses they would shag to study the long corridor and the thunder outside.

And for a quick second, maybe a minute, probably an hour, he wonders if maybe Zayn will be at the end of that long line waiting for an autograph and Liam’s number and possibly to offer Liam a reason to stay in for the night.

It’s daft but he lingers on the thought, smiling amusedly and holding his breath when they’re ushered towards the doors because –

Because he actually wants that.

 

|*|

 

He spends the half-hour just before the signing behind the building, chain smoking his way through a fresh pack of Kool’s with his eyes on the tattered skyline and his heart in his throat.

He doesn’t always get like this, just some days.  When everything seems to drag on longer and they spend more time in interviews and phone calls and van rides to _fuck knows where_ and he can’t breathe properly.  Not even with his boys crowded around him and their familiar voices in his ears and their hands calming him even when they can’t tell he’s uptight.

Thick fingers pluck free a new cigarette to chase the old smoke, quick glances at his Twitter feed for nothing more than a diversion until Harry peeks his head out and smiles carefully at him.

“You alright?” he asks in that dragging voice that reminds Liam of waking up in the bungalow with Harry pressed to his spine and Niall’s fuzzy hair trapped between his fingers.

He grins around the new cigarette, nodding.  “Perfect, babe.”

Harry snorts, nods back and pulls his trench closed to join Liam.  They tuck around each other while Liam blows the smoke in the opposite direction because he has manners and Harry vehemently hates that Liam smokes now –

And that Niall prefers Indian cuisine to Nando’s and Louis actually watches what he eats to impress Eleanor and they’re all so different from that group of idiot teenagers just trying to make it big.

“Something on your mind?”

Liam ignores the way that Harry’s always like this – caring, carefree, cloyingly gentle with all of them when he’s loud, neon bright with the rest of the world.  He sniffs at the wet air and huffs through a few drags before curving his fingers through Harry’s hair.

“I don’t miss her,” he admits but it feels repetitive.  “But that’s not why I don’t wanna go out.  It’s not about her.”

“Never is,” Harry grins.

Liam nods, choking on the smoke and a laugh.  “It’s just – “

“We all get this way, Li,” Harry promises under the crack of thunder.  “We just want something different, right?  Same old shit, just a different – “

“ _Harry Styles_ , you will not quote our music back to me,” Liam giggles, scrubbing fingers over Harry’s scalp.

Harry cackles, presses further into Liam, breathing in the nicotine and Liam’s citrus body wash and the warmth they both provide.

“Still,” Harry hums with content, biting at Liam’s exposed jaw, “We all sort of need to get laid before the tour starts up, right?  Even Lou Bear.”

Liam smiles into a thick brush of curls, eyes closing while his throat opens to the hot smoke.

“What even are he and El nowadays?” Liam teases, nudging their hips together.

Harry shrugs, laughs playfully.  “Who knows?  The idiot seems content parading that shit-storm around until it falls apart.  And I shall – “

“Support him every bit of the way,” Liam reminds him and Harry doesn’t argue with him.

He smiles, curls his fingers around Liam’s and waits quietly for ten minutes until Liam’s done with his cigarette and exhaling the nerves into the wet atmosphere.

 

|*|

 

“I bet that one would be up for a gang bang,” Niall whispers a little too loudly into Harry’s curls with an arm curved around Liam’s shoulders and a foot tapping over Louis’ fresh Vans.

“You lot are gross,” Louis groans, laughing silently when Paul swoops in to flick the back of Niall’s ear to silence him.  “And she looks downright against anything greater than a threesome.”

Two hours and half the line later, Liam has managed to engross himself in even cheaper smiles and lazy autographs across books and posters and, oddly, candid pictures of himself he doesn’t remember posing for while Harry and Niall plot in whispers they’re conquests and Louis takes to singing all of _their_ solos in their songs in the background rather than his own.

They’re sat in a neat line of chairs at a never-ending table with security bookending them and an avalanche of PR team members hovering over them to make sure they pose properly and answer all of the right questions.  Louis gives them hell with all of his demands – _‘no, I want ice cold bottled water that tastes like it’s room temperature and, Christ man, just the chocolate donuts next time’_ – while Niall snuggles under Harry’s arm to mouth naughty words at his cheek whenever some poor girl’s top is cut a little too low – on purpose, of course.

He grins playfully and throws out dumb facts at the crowd to distract from Niall and Louis’ lack of an attention span and Harry’s slow drawl whenever he starts up another story.  He’s reduced to giggles and hidden grins whenever a fan proposes Harry and Louis scoot closer – _of course_ – and wrestles a fan’s phone away when Niall uses it to order Nando’s and purposely doesn’t _glare_ at every boy in the line in hopes that they might be –

Because _they’re not_ and he knew he wouldn’t show and who the hell was _Zayn_ anyway?

Just another fresh-faced dick living in London while pretending to be anywhere else.

Except – and it’s the only exception Liam permits himself to accept – there’s a little something deeper behind that integration of browns and greens that Liam sort of longs for.

In a completely, meaningless, shallow way, of course.

But it’s somewhere between the steady repetition of _who’s your favorite comic book character?_ and _are you really single_? and _is it true what they say about Louis and Harry?_ that he chances a look to a corner of the large room and –

He’s not daft, a complete idiot.  He knows his heart doesn’t _stop_ and he doesn’t float up into a million fluffy white clouds but something chases warmth up his blood and he goes a little lightheaded from the sensation.  There’s something electric between his fingertips, something light on his tongue and he knows it’s probably the adrenaline from the rush of the crowd or the attention or the firefly-like flashes from a hundred different cameras but –

Liam leans back and chews his thumbnail, stares until Zayn lifts his head a little and he swears his vision is too lazy to pick apart all of his features but he thinks there’s a smile on Zayn’s lips.

He _thinks_.

It takes another hour and the increasingly sloppy scribbling of his name across varied objects before everything feels devoid of gravity when he strides over to that corner.  He cocks his hip against the wall, folds his arms until the cotton of his shirt stretches like a second skin and he eyes Zayn with this certain kind of lopsided grin that probably looks foolish but draws up a quiet laugh from the boy.  And he feels like he’s somewhere between the sky and the ocean, _suspended_ , when Zayn nudges a little closer but not too close –

Fingertips separating, a whole swallow of oxygen, endless space that consumes this hunger inside of Liam.

“Hi,” he says instead of the brilliant poetic words he’d been thinking of since the car ride over.  He cups the nape of his neck as a distraction when Zayn snorts, bites at his own lip like he’s in disbelief.

“Hey,” Zayn replies, pushing into the wall with his spine, a foot cocked against the cheap paint.  “Is that what you always say when you chat with someone?”

“Only the ones I like,” Liam says automatically and it sounds cheesy, forgettable but he can’t quite help it.  He flexes an eyebrow when the light shines a new shade to Zayn’s cheeks, a subtle _‘caught you’_ in his blood that coats his heart before he adds, “Is your mate around?  The one you said you were gonna bring up?”

Zayn bats his lashes in this long, nervous stroke before he looks away.  He ducks his head, grinds on his lip until it looks swollen – _suckable and supple_ , he thinks – and drags shaky fingers through his hair.

“He didn’t wanna come up.  Says he’s not really a fan.  Thinks your music is shit,” Zayn answers and that pink stain across his cheeks goes deeper so quickly, eyes blown wide at the realization before he stammers, “I mean – that came out like, I mean – “

Liam laughs softly, instinctively dropping a hand onto Zayn’s shoulder.  Fingers squeeze into the tendons until something loosens through the boy, until he pushes back rather than away.

Liam grins, a rhythm midway between head and heart unconsciously driving the stroke of his thumb to Zayn’s neck.  “S’okay.  I hate our early stuff too.  Too cheesy, right?”

Those thick eyelashes flutter rapidly and Zayn lifts his chin a little, his mouth quirking, before he nods.

“A little bit.”

Something uncoils from Liam’s esophagus and he breathes out a laugh while steadying his hand across Zayn’s shoulder, to the side of his neck and he swears those aren’t goosebumps chasing his touch but possibly.

His eyes shift over the boy for a heartbreaking moment and _wow_.  It’s all he thinks, foolishly, for that long breath –

Zayn’s hair is pulled up into a half-quiff, not quite long enough to withstand the product slathered through it.  He’s got on some silly Bob Marley shirt, a varsity jacket with faded leather on the sleeves.  His loose jeans sit uneven on his slender hips and his chunky boots are undone by the strings.  There’s fascinating scars on varied knuckles that Liam wants to know the story behind, a still unclean jaw that gives away only bits of his age.  Under this cheap fluorescent lighting his eyes are almost harvest gold, sharp scratches of a midnight brown around the irises and his sugar spun candy bottom lip is a complete diversion to the sharpness of his cheekbones.

He flicks a sunrise pink tongue over his chapped lips, fingers toying with a pendant around his neck and there’s homemade beaded bracelets with frayed material holding them together around his wrist.  There’s a nervous, uncertain energy about him that he keeps deflecting with a tough exterior, half-grimaces, a persona he tries to own but isn’t confident enough to command.

Liam swallows a laugh at that – _easy prey_ Louis would call him – but fixes his fingers just behind Zayn’s ear, to the softer skin, and waits for a reaction.

A small shiver, barely noticeable, with wide eyes and teeth bearing down on his lip to control the wobbly noise his throat almost creates.

 _Good boy_.

“You didn’t get anything for your sisters,” Liam tells him.  He avoids the tactless, Harry Styles approach to this – _‘fancy sucking my dick while I watch cartoons?’_ Harry once tried, successfully, on some half-drunk bird and Liam refuses to mourn the nights of rooming four boys to one small hotel suite – and lets the cold press of the stud in Zayn’s cartilage graze over his thumb.

Zayn shoves off the wall clumsily, a little closer to Liam, and yanks a crumpled old poster from his back pocket.  It’s one of those memorabilia keepsakes that Liam regrets posing for in a fully buttoned Oxford, unruly curls a cheap imitation of Harry’s, properly pressed khaki’s and crinkled brown eyes.

He makes a face before rolling it back up, tossing it in a nearby bin.

Zayn makes a mild noise of dissatisfaction that Liam giggles at and he strokes his fingers over Zayn’s exposed skin to the unfamiliar music in the backdrop – curling a thumb under Zayn’s jaw at the _‘we fell in love in stereo and he broke my heart in stereo’_ that drags a wicked grin over his lips.

“That’s an awful one,” Liam mumbles with his lip pressed between his teeth before leaning in, noses almost brushing, to whisper, “We’ll get them a new one and matching bedroom linen and a massive pile of signed bullshit they’ll love you for.”

There’s an awkward, unintentional tilt to Zayn’s head and it’s just about the right angle for Liam to push forward and kiss the smudge of blush off his cheek but he refrains.  He admires the way Zayn presses his cheek into Liam’s open palm for a minute, revels in the way they fit like –

And he knows he shouldn’t be considering things like that.  Not when he hasn’t even bothered to ask Zayn if he’s into lads or if he’s willing or if this is just casual conversation.  Not when he shouldn’t be doing _this_ , so openly, in a crowded room.

But the world around them is just this blurred out vision like when you’re high and everyone’s too distracted by Harry and Louis cuddling, Niall’s stupid jokes, to notice them.

The nervous twist of Zayn’s lip, unsure fingers absently grazing Liam’s hip springs something lethal in Liam’s system and he grins down at the boy.  He arches an eyebrow, lifts his brow at Zayn like ‘ _can we find some place a little more private?’_ that Zayn doesn’t balk at.

Instead, he sighs a pretty noise and that alarmingly overwhelmed look in Zayn’s eyes leads Liam to drag his fingers under the collar of that stupid jacket to chase Zayn’s skin until he finds a calm.

There’s a shaky breath past Zayn’s lips and his eyes are unconsciously watching Liam’s bottom lip, the small stroke of his tongue between white teeth.

“C’mon babe,” Liam whispers beneath the roar of music and shrieking girls and something bright explodes in Zayn’s eyes, little crinkles around them when he smiles wide.

It unsettles this feeling inside of Liam – something guilty, something provoking – that he shoves down because maybe Harry is right?  Maybe they all just need out.  An escape.  Just to get off with someone before the tour, right?

He echoes that sentiment in the back of his head when he twists his fingers into the hem of Zayn’s shirt, knuckles brushing the line of Zayn’s semi-hard cock, and he whispers something habitually shy into Paul’s ear.

Paul turns with a grimace, sliding eyes over Liam and then Zayn, and shoots him an almost disappointed look before nodding and Liam refuses to let his heart race at the glare Paul gives them on the way to the vans –

Because Liam is _not_ the puppy of the group anymore.  He’s not the nice one.  The one who sits behind all night while the other three ravage London.

He’s _Liam goddamn Payne_ , right?

He tells himself that all the way down the corridors, into the wet streets with his fingers tangling into Zayn’s.  He watches Zayn chew a sweet bruise into his bottom lip when he climbs into the backseat and strokes calm fingers to Zayn’s neck instead of concentrating on the way the city lights spinning against the glass make him think of that seventeen year old he once was with big dreams and a silly competition that taught the world his name.

 

|*|

 

And this boy is _just a fuck_ , right?

Just a distraction, an excuse to focus on anything but the world hanging over his head.

He’s just a smooth, pliant body between cold sheets under a galaxy of stars and this endless pressure that Liam keeps avoiding.  Or this little ache under his skin from a heartbreak he can’t quite forget.

Or a something in-between and Liam’s okay with that idea.

 

|*|

 

He swears he’s okay with that idea.

 

|*|

 

They all do this: random hookups with whomever – someone from a club, a haphazard promotional intern, the ones that pretend they’re not a fan even though they know each of the boys’ birthdays and how they like their eggs in the morning.

Sometimes, rarely, it’s an actual fan when they’re too lazy to look for a decent shag.  It’s not habitual – finding that one that won’t post pictures of their bed sheets on Instagram or tweet about what it’s like to shag one of them – and Liam has made it a habit of avoiding such things ever since _Niall and the Red Dress_ – a title given by Louis the morning after that blonde with the fetish for candy during sex snapped off a few pictures of Niall’s underwear collection and the marks he left behind along her collarbone.

But Liam has three unbendable, inexcusable, _no fine print_ rules to this: the first being to never, ever kiss like he means it – always rough or chaste or uninviting to the notion of _‘something more.’_   Next, no touching the hair – a superficial rule, yes, but complex in ways he will never quite explain.  The last and most important: he will never get attached to things related to these moments.  No repeat performances.  No call backs.  He will not fall victim to the throes of love or destiny or complex rhythms of the heart when associated with lust.

It’s unbreakable; non-negotiable.

He hasn’t spent years perfecting his singing voice and etching his arms in meaningful ink and kissing strangers like _‘goodbye’_ rather than _‘can you stay until morning’_ to be the victim of hormones or fate or silly escapism.

 

|*|

 

His thoughts are scattered images and dislocated words and unhinged noises and the air in his hotel room is a little too cool, too damp from the cracked window he spent hanging out of for five minutes smoking his way through a cigarette while Zayn shifted nervously on the corner of his bed.  He can still taste his smile around the filter when Zayn looked up at him through long lashes and the quiet plea over pink lips – _like are you sure I’m supposed to be here?_ and _do you really want me?_ – forced him to flick away the remainder of his cigarette and shove this twitching boy backwards against the sheets.

He imagines it should’ve been a little more complicated rather than halfhearted kisses and anxious hands across Zayn’s lean form but it’s not.  Not when a hard dick is pressed into Liam’s thigh and, when his hands push away the jacket to trace up the artfully done ink over Zayn’s forearm – a comic book _ZAP!_ and a neatly inked microphone and crossed fingers like a promise – he swears he can taste all of the trembles under Zayn’s skin with his earnest mouth.

And Zayn’s kisses were a little unpracticed, messy, desperate in ways that reminded Liam of sixteen and the first breast he palmed just before the competition.  The keen in Zayn’s voice – a subtle harmony that makes Liam think this boy would be magic behind a glass booth in a small studio – is achy and Liam adds just enough pressure to Zayn’s collarbone to stain it bright red.

The lights are set dimly and, belatedly, he thinks maybe he could’ve tidied up or offered Zayn a drink or even bothered to wash the taste of nicotine out of his mouth but Zayn kissed him like none of that mattered.  Its in-between Liam teasing little gasps pulls from his throat and taunting him by carefully removing his own shirt that something stings in his brain –

_Maybe he’s a virgin?_

And he thinks of red rose petals and slow, warm baths and scented oils and taking the time to learn the definition of Zayn’s teeth along his bottom lip but that feeling is so fleeting.

It’s so – he’s _just a fuck_ , remember?

He’s a kid with skillful hands dragging along Liam’s torso and warm lips coaxing grunts from Liam’s mouth anytime they skim over his throat.  He’s easy to shove around but, in his own defiant way, he _pushes back_ and fights with the buttons of Liam’s jeans until Liam smiles into a quick kiss and whispers _‘wait a minute, babe, let me take care of you first’_ that has something fluttering in Zayn’s chest, just beneath Liam’s palm.

It’s a little before midnight, the moon a white hot sun in a dark, dark sky and Liam knows Louis is pissed off bourbon and those acidic fireball whiskey shots Niall has him addicted to and passed out in the room next door just by the slow whistling snores coming through the walls.  The television is on low, just a quiet roar of _Superman Returns_ Zayn clicked on while Liam smoked.  And Liam has reduced himself to fewer kisses along Zayn’s bare chest to crawling on his knees with his jeans around his thighs and Zayn’s tangled around his ankles.

He grins to himself, kissing along Zayn’s hipbone, outlining the trivial Chinese symbol with the tip of his tongue while yanking down his Green Lantern boxers.  Zayn is distracted by the stillness of the room and the slow build of shadows along the wall when his cock slaps wetly under his navel.  Liam can almost hear the boy swallow, feels the shake on the inside of his thighs, taste the apprehension when he mouths damp kisses along the thin thatch of hair just under the lip of his belly button.

“Calm down,” he whispers along Zayn’s skin, teeth meeting flesh, waiting on the eager groan Zayn produces when he soothes the bruises with his lips.

“Oh fuck,” Zayn chokes, eyes shut and fingers twisting uncontrollably in the expensive sheets that Liam _hates_ –

They’re never soft enough against his skin when he sleeps naked or comforting like the ones back home or warm enough when he’s alone.

He grins patiently when Zayn rocks his hips up a little, a bit expectant, and smears dizzying kisses along the flared head.  His bottom lip catches the thick gloss of precome on it and he waits until Zayn bats an eye open to slowly lick it away.  He smirks at the reckless breath Zayn exhales, tongues the thick vein along the underside, concentrates on techniques he learned from that one bloke in Manchester who gave much better blowjobs than any girlfriend he’s ever had –

All tongue and saliva and constricting throat muscles when he went deep.

Zayn’s spine bends almost inhumanly for Liam’s mouth and he swallows the boy halfway, tonguing the slit open, pressing a tolerant hand to Zayn’s thigh to keep him steady while spare fingers drag through the messy, newborn dark hairs surrounding the root.  He licks deliberately slow around the head, admiring the shine under gilded hotel lighting, watching it spit thicker drops of precome out.  He groans softly, palms his own cock until his fingers come back sticky and he smears the sheen to the inside of Zayn’s thigh before swallowing him again.

There’s tight, restrained whimpers filling his ears – over Lex Luthor’s dialogue and the car collision in his head and the _‘be careful, he’s still new’_ in his heart – like Zayn’s trying to control himself but he’s wriggling beneath Liam’s hands and tearing at the sheets and flexing his thighs around Liam’s ears.

The head catches on his bottom lip when he draws off.  He tastes salty, smalls hints of sweet like fresh kiwi, his scent musky and overpowering.  Liam works his teeth in small touches across the crown, flicks away the wetness his tongue doesn’t provide, thumbs over the vein until Zayn shivers.

“C’mon, babe,” he encourages and Zayn whines into his fist with wide eyes, almost drawing blood when Liam kisses his way downward.

A quick tease of his tongue over Zayn’s tight, still young sac shoves a long gasp from Zayn’s lungs and Liam rides the momentum, attaches his lips to the head again and waits until Zayn’s body transitions from rough waves to calm ripples again.

There’s a steady soundtrack of a headboard knocking against a wall to his left that filters through the wet noises of Liam’s mouth and the gentle murmurs from Zayn’s throat.  It’s disruptive and, immediately, Liam knows why.  He can’t quite fit the sigh in his mouth, not with Zayn’s cock so deep now but he groans in frustration rather than in pleasure when Harry’s muddled voice seeps through the cracks.

“Christ, Nialler, must she be so _loud_?”

“Oi, fuck off,” Niall grunts with a shake in his voice, “She’s enjoying me cock, mate.”

“Well shut her up.”

Niall barks a laugh that echoes a little louder than the unsteady bedframe.  “With _what_?  My cock is already in her – “

“Fuck, dunno,” Harry groans, something between pleasure and annoyance, “Your fingers, mate.  In her mouth ‘cause the twit is making me lose my stiffy.”

There’s an unfamiliar voice, suffocated and throaty like she’s just pulled off a cock and – _oh_.

“Hey, that’s my sister.”

“Yes,” Harry sneers with a deflated sigh, “and _that’s my willy_ – care to put it back in your throat, yeah?”

Liam smiles around Zayn’s dick, lazily stroking it until Zayn lets out a small whimper, a little unsteady shift of his hips reminding Liam that, right, he is supposed to focus on this boy writhing across foreign hotel sheets with broken sunlight for eyes, a pair of sugary lips bitten red by white teeth, legs spread just for Liam.

“Am I – am I doing bad?” Zayn asks with a stutter, shifting and drawing his hips back a little.  “Am I not good?  I’m sorry – “

Liam pulls off loudly, smirking, working a deceptive tongue around the head until an embarrassingly sweet note floats from Zayn’s throat.

“Doing fine, babe,” Liam says assuredly, kissing just under the head, leaving a sweet gloss to Zayn’s skin with his excess saliva.  “’m sorry, just got a bit distracted.”

Zayn nods jerkily, hips canting, long fingers spreading wide over the bed linen with a little twitch like they need something to hold onto.

Liam quirks an eyebrow high, his lips shifting upward in a not so subtle form.

He clears his throat into his fist, slides a slick hand up the shaft before whispering, “How many lads have you been with?”

Zayn stutters on a breath, the hitching noise loud over everything else.  “Well, um, I – “ he licks at his dry lips, turns his eyes to Liam’s slowing fist like he’s done something wrong.  “None, really.  Just a snog or two when I was smashed on too much cider at a birthday party.”

The expected smoke that fills Liam’s lungs only partly drowns him.  He cocks his head and flutters his tongue around the head, curls it into his mouth, swallows around Zayn as he slides down.  He palms at his thighs, spreads Zayn a little wider and struggles against his gag reflex when he goes a little too deep – because he hasn’t done _that_ enough times, not without proper preparation – but recovers quickly when Zayn thumps back against the mattress.

He pulls off with a husky breath, the kind he knows from huffing through too many cigarettes or those rehearsals he spent hours perfecting his vocal control when they were all still new to this group dynamic.

“So you’re a virgin, yeah?”

Zayn furrows his brow at him, pulls assertively at the sheets until Liam swallows him again, stealing the last of his arrogant breaths.

“No,” Zayn gasps defensively but his hips rock up to meet Liam’s lips.  “Me last girlfriend gave me a few blowjobs.”

“Like this one?” Liam wonders, coyly.

A noise breaks in Zayn’s throat – Liam thinks in falsetto, delicious tenor chords Louis dreams of reaching – and Liam licks the head until it’s wet and glossy between his fingers again.

“Y-yeah – _no_ ,” Zayn falters, turning until the pink of his cheek is pressed into the wrinkled sheets.  “Fuck, no, Liam.  Not at all.”

Liam, in that instant, catches the catalyst of stars, the tip of the tide, the spark of a newborn flame in Zayn’s eyes.  Just beyond the blown pupils and heavy exhales from a pretty mouth – he sees inclination.

He sees a boy navigating through a big, big galaxy with Liam as a compass and it shakes unhealthy tremors in his chest until he knocks it away.  Until he focuses his lips on Zayn’s cock and his eyes on those tight stomach muscles and his fingers are driving this boy mad.

His second rule is shattered then – Zayn’s fingers carefully carding through his hair like _he’s_ the one who needs encouragement.  Like Zayn needs to feel _safe_.  Like creating a tether between them and, instead of jerking away, Liam leans into the touch with a twitching cock resting heavy on his tongue and his neck stretching to admire this boy –

Zayn gives a small tug on his hair like he’s uncertain of their boundaries.  It’s gentle, trivial until Liam growls receptively, the wings of a phoenix cresting over his spine as he sinks a little lower on Zayn’s cock.  He moans when Zayn is a little less hesitant, reckless and he’s distracted by the choked giggle Zayn releases when spare saliva slips from his lips down Zayn’s shaft.

He pinches at a soft thigh like _‘shut it’_ but swirls his tongue around the crown, eyes fluttering shut when Zayn drags dull fingernails over his scalp and ruts his hips upward until his cock slides anxiously into Liam’s throat.

Liam pulls off, loses most of his syllables on the silly, dazed expression wrinkling Zayn’s face.  He drags his fingers up Zayn’s thighs until they, absently, slide wider and his hips tip up just enough to expose a pinkish hole and –

“C’mere, babe,” Liam says in this deep, dragging voice that shocks something terrifying to Zayn’s face.  He grins at it, licks teasingly at the head of Zayn’s cock before patting his hip with waggling eyebrows.  “Turn over and get on y’knees for me.”

There’s a pause, a delay in Zayn’s action and the room is hollowed out by his shallow breaths and Niall’s keening and that telltale sign that Harry is on the verge.

Liam smirks, eases Zayn out of his pants and jeans and presses gentle fingers into his hipbone until the shivers break sweat over his skin.

“But I’m – I don’t know – “

Liam laughs deep in his throat, smoothing anticlimactic kisses to Zayn’s neck, across his shoulder before burying his words in Zayn’s skin.

“Not gonna fuck you,” he says with a silkiness that loosens Zayn’s bones immediately, “not now, at least.  Maybe if y’want, later?”

Zayn’s fingers twist around Liam’s wrist, a silent _‘yes, maybe, we could’_ that Liam makes note of but spares all of his energy into turning Zayn onto his knees, pressing on the small of his back until Zayn lowers his chest to the sheets and slides his thighs wide.

Liam thinks in slow beats, tender touches, the deep breath you take before you dive in the deep end and almost abandons all of it when he catches Zayn’s stiff cock bobbing between his spread thighs, the quiet texture of his skin.

He patterns his tongue to the slow trail his fingers leave behind, thumbs gently spreading Zayn and he drapes hot kisses over the dimples at the shallow dip in his spine.  There’s an unmistakable quiver in Zayn’s thighs, fingers twisting into the sheets and Liam thinks _hesitation_ is a complete waste of life.  He thinks –

He doesn’t, really.  He bears just enough weight on Zayn’s hips and leans in and swirls his tongue over Zayn’s hole.  The yelp that follows, quiet but strong, urges the beast in his chest and he smiles through his next few strokes.

Zayn presses his face into the bunched sheets, hollowed breaths suffocated by expensive cotton, hair already wrecked from the blowjob.  He whimpers in this serene tone that consumes Liam until he’s licking this boy open, loosening his hole with the tip of his tongue, holding him steady even though his limbs are strung tight.

Liam drags his mouth over Zayn’s hole, sucks softly until Zayn whines, flutters his tongue over the quivering muscles.  He loves the way Zayn’s knees shift on the sheets, the way he tries not to push back on Liam’s mouth but does when Liam smacks a hand tenderly to his bum.  He drags his tongue upward, across the taut skin, fumbles his way to Zayn’s cock and holds it steady when the slap of the wet head against his belly plays like a diversion.

Zayn sobs, scratching at the sheets, rubbing his temple into the linen to wipe away some of the sweat.  His hips sway to something unfamiliar in the background and Liam’s stubble burns pretty pink marks into his skin.

“Good?” Liam wonders, using his tongue to swipe up a line of stray saliva before pressing it back into Zayn’s hole.

“Shit.”

Liam grins, mouths out half of the words to some old Michael Jackson song – completely inappropriate, except the _‘tell ‘em that it’s human nature’_ – just for the trembles it aches up Zayn’s tendons.

Half of Zayn’s tattoos are lost in the sea of comforters when Liam tilts his head to spread his hole a little wider.

“Can you come like this?” Liam wonders, the scruff on his cheek scratching over Zayn’s bare skin.  He grips a hip to slow Zayn’s rocking while auxiliary fingers squeeze just around the head of his cock, the slit blurting out sticky drops.

“I dunno,” Zayn groans but Liam adds a little pressure, hummingbird-like motions with his tongue, and Zayn’s voice cracks when he gasps, “Yes, oh fuck, _yes_.”

Liam smirks, soothes gentle kisses over Zayn’s skin until he stops shaking.

“So wet,” Liam whispers into Zayn’s strained muscles, everything inside of him lit by the way this boy reacts to him.  “Look at you, babe.  Wet like some of the girls I’ve been down on.”

Zayn whimpers, teeth tugging at the sheets with a scrunched face.

“But better,” Liam adds with a calm hand under Zayn’s belly, stroking away the resistance.  “Babe, so much better.”

“Don’t stop,” Zayn begs half into the bed, pressing his forehead into the mattress, a lazy upside down glance at Liam between his thighs.  “Can come like this if you – “

“You can do whatever you want, babe,” Liam swears, gradually stroking Zayn off, pressing his mouth back to his arse.  “M’not gonna stop until you do.”

It’s almost a promise, almost a declaration and the kind of cheap line – _sincere_ , he thinks even though he knows he shouldn’t – that has Zayn squirming and pushing into Liam’s fingers and against his tongue until something uncontrollable bursts from his chest.

Liam catches Zayn’s come on his fingers, to the soft of his palm, across his fresh sheets.  He’s surprised by the way Zayn spasms, the way his hole opens and closes around Liam’s tongue, the soft expression that melds over his face as he’s swallowed up in his high.

He looks – fuck, _breathtaking_.

Zayn rolls away instantly, his skin going pink, his fringe falling in his eyes, a dusting of nirvana over his expression before he looks abashed and ashamed.  He curls halfway into the sheets and blindly reaches out for Liam, palming over his stomach before nervously sliding a hand into Liam’s briefs for his cock.

“Hey, babe,” Liam coos, tangling his fingers around Zayn’s wrist to pull him off but Zayn fights back, squeezes and thumbs away the foreskin.

“Can I?”

Liam watches him – broken angel drifting on a white sea of cotton – and nods uncertainly, automatically fucking into Zayn’s hand when Zayn’s too uncoordinated to find a rhythm.

“You sure?”

Zayn bites at his lip, blinks at Liam before crawling to the edge of the bed for a sustainable grip.

“Yeah,” he exhales in this rough voice like he’s just woken up.  He flexes his fingers around the head, moves a little unsteadily over the foreskin before his spare hand tentatively works Liam’s pants lower.  “You’ve got a nice cock.”

He blushes instantly, ducking his head and Liam catches his chin with clean fingers, knocks it upward to filter through the gold and brown in his eyes.

“That was daft, man,” Zayn squeaks with this goofy smile that crinkles his eyes and shoves his cheeks upward.  “I’m a complete arse, ‘m sorry.  I’m usually more gangster.”

“When?  When you’re wanking a lad off?” Liam teases but his fingers stroke Zayn’s jaw like he’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen –

And he might be, in another context, under different variables.

Instead, Liam sways his hips and shivers out more precome to slick Zayn’s fingers and feels helpless when he finds Zayn gazing up at him.

“Gonna come,” he warns and he’s not sure if he’s breathless from the build in his stomach or the way this boy makes him feel buoyant and vulnerable and outrageous.

Zayn bites gently on his lip, scoots forward like he wants –

Fuck he’s _absolutely manic_.

Liam tilts his hips down instead and bites his fingers into Zayn’s bare shoulder and swallows an achy groan when he slicks Zayn’s chest with his come.  He trembles, toes curling into the delicate carpet, and drags messy kisses along Zayn’s hairline as soft fingers stroke him through his orgasm.

He feels weak and excited by the way Zayn hesitantly spreads kisses along his hip.  He smears his come across Zayn’s skin like battle paint and knocks his lips away to grin down at the boy and, for a second, wonders what their combined come across his skin tastes like.

Instead, he pats Zayn’s shoulder in a gentle manner and scoots away before Zayn’s fingers tease over his sensitive cock.  He turns on his heels, grabs a fresh towel and a new pair of boxers before locking his phone – _just in case_ – and throwing Zayn a sheepish look over his shoulder.

There’s a sharp edge about him, the way he’s pulling at the sheets and glancing around at everything but Liam and he looks so lost, so helpless again.

“I should probably – “

Liam sighs gently, ignores the clarity in his mind telling him to let Zayn leave, shamefully pink and confused, for the numbness under his bones and says, “You can stick around for a little bit, yeah?  ‘m just gonna shower, freshen up a little.  Okay?”

Zayn shoots him a hopeful look with wide eyes, a lopsided smile that shouldn’t make Liam giddy.  It shouldn’t make him want to stride across the room and kiss this boy, tangle their fingers together to drag him into a steamy shower with him –

He shouldn’t want a _repeat performance_.

“You sure ‘cause I can – “

“S’okay,” Liam replies, waving him off because this feeling twisting around his muscles, coiling around his spine is irritating.  He offers Zayn a thumbs up, a cheesy grin he knows he only gives their fans when he doesn’t feel like being bothered and silently slides into the bathroom.

 

|*|

 

It takes him ten minutes and those little techniques he learned from the singing coach during boot camp to remember how to regulate his breathing and to stop the way his hands shake.

He tries not to remember anything before that.

 

|*|

 

His skin feels awakened, the pinks of his fingertips alive, a nice billowing cloud of steam from the shower and orange-ginger body scrub he stole from Louis lifting his senses and he’s still scrubbing a towel through his hair – humming out the _‘cause I was just a fool, a fool for you when I loved you so childishly’_ in his head – when he pauses –

No, _stops_.

Inhales, exhales, waits.

Zayn is still on the edge of his bed with a bare chest stained in drying smudges of their come and his hair out of place, glasses on his face, an open _Justice League_ comic book in his lap.

There’s still something soft about him, under the hardened muscles and hollow bones and immature stubble.  He’s still a boy with the way his mouth sits, the bow of his back but he’s growing out of it, Liam can tell, from the way he holds his shoulders and tightens his jaw and the scrapes over his knuckles.  He’s not naïve but he’s still toeing the edge of a swimming pool, looking for the smartest part to dive into.

He jumps a little when Liam clears his throat, hip cocked against the doorframe with a fluffy towel hanging from his shoulder and Zayn eyes him with a bottom lip fit between his teeth and an indecision in his large eyes.

“I didn’t know you, um,” Zayn falters, chasing glances between Liam’s mouth and the comic between his thighs.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – “

Liam waves him off with a grin.  “I mostly read them when no one’s around.  Sort of remind me of my childhood and stuff like that.  Silly little boy wanting to be a superhero.”

Zayn beams at him, nodding.  There’s something unsettling bright about him now, like he’s comfortable here –

Liam forces himself to ignore that – _just a fuck, right?_ – and tugs off the towel around his waist to slide into a pair of comfortable joggers.  He sniffs at a few shirts – mostly ruined by smoke but some from Louis’ cheap, knockoff colognes – before sliding into a Captain America one that’s black and fits tightly around his chest.  He smirks down at it, one he hasn’t worn since eighteen and those silly twit cam videos he did, a kid craving attention.

“I love Batman,” he admits, shuffling through the mountain of unpacked clothes, tossing a few melted candy bars into the bin.  “I actually saw _Man of Steel_ six times at the theater.”

He winces at the admission, shoulders hunching, and wishes he could take it back but Zayn giggles behind him and offers up this daydream sort of smile that makes Liam lose his footing on his way to the television.

Zayn blinks up at him, cocking his head sideways and gives him a curious look that Liam opposes by grunting and nodding.  He watches Zayn work long fingers through his hair and, absently, wishes they were his own tugging through thick, boyish strands, losing himself in the dark forest of a messy quiff and scratching along Zayn’s scalp.

He hates the weight on his chest and the throb between his thighs and drowns himself in late night infomercials rather than the way the light fixes gorgeous shadows to Zayn’s cheeks.

“Green Lantern,” Zayn confesses quietly, like he’s still shy and he’s still new to Liam, “I was at _the Dark Knight Rises_ midnight showing.  I was that guy in line with my hoodie on and my cousin’s Aviators.  I’m kind of geeky like that.”

Liam snorts, flops down onto the edge of the bed with Zayn.  He ghosts a few fingers over the back of Zayn’s hand, across the scratches, almost linking their fingers.

“I dressed like him for Halloween three times,” he whispers, hiding his flushed cheeks in the fluff of the towel but Zayn squeezes his fingers back like _I already knew_ and Liam’s not sure why it expands something incredibly relaxing into his bones.

He catches Zayn’s grin between their nearly brushing shoulders and _fuck this boy is a wonder_ – not like Dick Grayson but so much more.

There’s something terribly alarming about that thought alone and the smoke that once lit his lungs suffocates his chest and he bumps their knuckles trying to move away, standing up and stretching and faking a yawn like he’s exhausted because –

He’s certain he’s never knew why people always say _‘this too shall pass’_ but it seems meaningful and he’s learning to adapt to proverbs and poetic words from dead Greek poets because Harry has adopted this new Zen atmosphere about himself.

His thoughts regulate to the prolonged suffering he knows comes along with _attachment_ and he presents Zayn with a half-grin when the boy looks up at him, biting his lip into oblivion with a weary look stuffed behind his eyelashes.  He scrubs fingers through his still-damp hair and shrugs with one shoulder, squeezing his phone between his fingers.

“Security will take you down and make sure you get out safely, alright?” Liam offers politely, ridding his voice of that wobble he knows is begging for release.  He scratches at his temple, shuffles a foot over the carpet before adding, “They’ll make sure no one stops you or asks you anything.  I’ll foot the bill for the cab and you don’t have to worry about – “

He pauses to stupidly glance at Zayn and then –

 _Fucking idiot_.

Zayn looks sheepish, inconsolably nervous while bouncing from foot to foot now.  He’s cornering his lip, still shirtless with his jeans sitting insanely low on his hips and Liam’s lips remember the taste of that ink on his hipbone and –

Liam clears his throat roughly, ducking his head.  “I swear security is real chill,” he smiles but it’s only halfhearted.  “They’ll take you out the back and stuff.”

Zayn nods, grins back but it’s forced and unstable.  He looks like –

 _Amazing_ sits uncomfortably on Liam’s tongue and his skin tightens around his muscles like leather stretched across furniture.

Still, there’s something just between the layers – something fragile.  Even behind the tough curl of his lip and the steely eyes and the hands that could probably push as hard as they pull, Liam wonders if this boy is a little delicate under the surface.  Maybe like a paper airplane – gorgeous upon view but gentle beyond the touch.

Zayn chews his bottom lip, dragging the heel of his hands over his jeans until Liam’s certain he’s wiped away the sweat and it roughs a sigh up Liam’s chest.

He doesn’t know what he’s thinking – snatching up his pack of Kool’s, stealing that fancy lighter Louis bought him for his nineteenth birthday and shrugging into an oversized Adidas hoodie before gripping his phone.  He unlocks the screen, grins down at the background picture – the four of them, just before they went from _‘those X-factor lads’_ to arena tours across the world.  He thumbs out a quick text to Louis – a _just in case_ – and spares a glance at Zayn, smiling evenly at the swollen red lip and wide, enthralling eyes.

Liam jerks his head towards the door, fishing through a pile of clothes for a semi-clean Henley – it still reeks of cigarette smoke and Niall’s gruff body spray – before tossing it at Zayn.

“I’ll go with you, yeah?” he offers as Zayn slides into the shirt, the sleeves swallowing him down to the first knuckle while the collar swoops low over his chest.

It – the loose fit, the exposed skin, the way it hides Zayn’s beautiful torso – almost, almost twitches something in Liam’s joggers and he kicks around the idea of shoving this boy back on those crumpled sheets and carving his name into Zayn’s smooth abdomen with his tongue.

He smiles, instead, dragging his knuckles over his stubble while Zayn balls up his jacket and wrinkled shirt.  “Need a smoke anyways.”

It’s true, mostly.  It’s been hours since his last fag and he likes a good breath of nicotine after a brilliant shag –

Not that any of that has happened but he can’t stop imagining this uncertain boy with the sharp edges and put upon bravado pressed to the hotel linen, thighs divided, writhing and pleading while Liam fucks him into a stuttered confidence.  While Liam tests his limits, learns the shape of his name, low and breathy, across that bubblegum pink tongue.  He wants to teach Zayn how rough he can be, how gentle he really is.  He wants their twisted fingers like vines over the sheets, sweaty flesh echoing the noise of their bodies colliding.

He wants to catch Zayn in the undertow until he’s tender beneath him with bruises marking his skin.

He wants to shift deep inside of Zayn until the shakes become ambient shivers and this boy understand just how beautiful he really is.

 

|*|

 

But none of that matters, not in the near future, because Zayn was just a _here-and-now_.

He’s not, by any means, a ‘ _what’s to come.’_

No one-off ever is.

 

|*|

 

Paul glares at him the whole walk to the lift, sneaking little glances at Zayn huddled behind him like he’s incredibly nervous, like they’ve been caught, something Liam finds amusing.  He knocks playfully into Paul to scrounge up a smile and pats his shoulder when Paul hands them off to Paddy, who’s a little more imposing but just as gleeful with his smile when he realizes its Liam and not the other three.  He leads them into the lift and, thankfully, they don’t find a sleepy Harry, who always craves snacks and sugary carbonation after a noisy shag, wandering the hallways.

“Late night shenanigans, Payno?” Paddy teases inside the metal box, jostling Liam with an elbow.

Liam smirks, drags his eyes over Zayn in the corner and the way he watches all of the red numbers rather than Liam’s face.  He snorts and shakes his head.

“Just a little casual chat, is all,” Liam replies, lips stretched wide when Paddy rolls his eyes.

“Don’t you start acting like those other three pricks.”

“But I thought you _loved_ us, Paddy,” Liam whines with a shaky laugh.

Paddy shoots him a sharp glare, peers past him at Zayn ruining his knuckles with his teeth and grins.

“Just you, Li, only you,” he sighs and Liam glows at that thought alone.

Something pulls on him, something thick and solid in his stomach, when Zayn hiccups out a sound between floors.  He nudges a little closer, their hips brushing, elbows touching, and he smiles down at Zayn when he looks up – still a little lost, still incredibly beautiful – until they hit the lobby.

“C’mon, babe,” Liam whispers with this teasing smile that turns endearing when Zayn takes a deep breath.  “Even the dark knight needs his boy wonder.”

It’s stupid, he knows, but the glaze of astonishment that stretches over Zayn’s face steals the blush from his cheeks and he’s a tiny bit fascinated by what knocks away this armor Zayn’s wearing and shows the man underneath.

 

|*|

 

The sky is that sharp contrast of inky black and sour purple with the stars glowing in between the cracks.  The clouds are a heavy grey from the passing storm and Liam’s not expecting the small crowd of fans gathered near the emergency exit when they push through the heavy metal door.  He watches Paddy throw up a protective arm to divide them and he quickly knocks it away with a grin, sneaking around to pose for a few perfected pictures and scribble his name off on shirts, cheap photo cards, politically correct stretches of skin with a stammering smile the entire time.

_“You look amazing Liam.”_

_“Where’s Harry?”_

_“You’re so beautiful!”_

Liam grins, tucks his chin a little to hide that bashful expression he has yet to grow out of.  He pens his name to a few more bare shoulders, naked forearms before smiling out, “Thanks babe.”

“Liam,” Paddy says in that demanding tone that always feels like his father’s voice.

Liam chuckles, gives a half-wink to a few of the girls and an apologetic _‘sorry babe, I better go’_ with starbursts still behind his eyelids.

Paddy tugs him by the collar while he, carefully, slides a warm to the small of Zayn’s back.  There’s something like a smirk on his lips the whole walk around the corner and he almost, almost doesn’t catch the frown on Zayn’s lips, teeth worrying that bottom lip red.  The shadows from the low-hanging trees and poor street lighting hides most of his face but, when Liam ducks in close, he can spot the pull of his lips, the scrunched brow.

Liam lights up when they’re at a small overpass, leaning over the railing to watch the city’s glow, the bleeding red lights from slow-moving cars, the shiny streets reflecting stars from the still-wet concrete.  He smiles down at the world, the quiet roar in his head dulled by the symphonic buzz of a sleeping London.

Zayn is out of range, too many yards away with fidgeting hands and a tipped back head watching the stars fade in and out of view.  They trade casual glances between breaths, nothing long.  Zayn chews at his thumbnail while Liam barrels through deep breaths of smoke and something etched in his face is unsure – like he shouldn’t be here.

“You smoke?” Liam asks, lazily waving around his cigarette.

Zayn pulls in his bottom lip and pulls out a fresh pack of Marlboros, holding them up for Liam to see under wavering light.

Liam snorts, nods at him with a _‘cheers’_ on his lips.  He groans a defeated noise, scampers a little closer to light the end of Zayn’s cigarette with the dying embers of his own.  He half-smirks at Zayn when he takes his first huff, practiced and professional, holding the filter like a spliff between his fingers while fogging the space between them with a bluish-grey haze.

He clears his throat while Paddy thumbs angrily through a game of Candy Crush in the background.  His tongue licks away the dryness from his lips while Zayn teeters on his heels, focuses on deep huffs of smoke rather than Liam.

“Hey,” he says lowly, drawing a spark of Zayn’s attention.

“Hi,” Zayn says under his breath, half of his voice clouded by a smoker’s cough that he can’t quite cover up.

Liam grins, presses to the steel railing again.

“C’mere,” he encourages, tipping his chin up.  Zayn falters a little and Liam laughs, a wheezing noise that rattles light in his chest.  “No, seriously, c’mere man.”

When Zayn’s halfway, he gently wraps appreciative fingers around his smooth wrist and tugs him the rest of the way.  He keeps a strong palm to the small of Zayn’s back, grins down at him for a moment – just to admire the flecks of honey in his eyes, to watch the twist of his naturally pink lip – before finishing the rest of his cigarette with his eyes on the world spread out before them.

The lights chase off Zayn’s face as he takes a few lazy drags of his own fag, breathing the smoke out of his nose.  His spare, irresolute fingers fit between them to smooth over the fabric of Liam’s hoodie.

“First thought?” Liam asks, flicking away his cigarette.  He blows the smoke into the rush of wind that strokes by them, watches it swirl into the madness.

Zayn ducks his head, words buried between them.  “I feel stupid.”

“Why?”

Zayn shrugs under Liam’s arm, kicks at stray rocks by their feet.  He spares a quick glance over his shoulder at Paddy, the bluish light shining off his grimace when he loses another game.  There’s a quiet moment, just their lulled breathing, before he shuffles further into Liam.

“You called them _babe_ and I – “

The wind casts down with a sharp howl, drowns the reach of Zayn’s voice but it hits Liam.  It nearly topples him over.  It’s a hurricane and he’s without an anchor.

He keeps loose fingers on Zayn’s back, refuses to look down when he knows Zayn’s looking up at him.  He refuses to remember what it’s like to be seventeen and with that first person that makes you feel –

 _Zayn is just a fuck_.

Something hot and choking like smoke fills his throat and he knows better.  He’s taught himself better but –

He breaks his first rule, unapologetically, when his heart twists around itself and Zayn nudges their hips together like _hello I’m still here_.  It teases a grin out of his lip and his fingers catch on Zayn’s chin, knocking it up as he leans down and it’s a soft kiss.  It’s the _first real kiss_ , he thinks, he’s shared with this boy.  Slow, deliberately slow and tender like that first yawn after a long slumber.

Liam kisses him thorough, underneath a chaotic sky of colors and stars, surrounded by a wet city and without a proper thought in his head.

Just this silly boy who’s alarmingly distracting with every second that trips by.

“I’m sorry, babe – “

He cuts himself off with a choked noise, their noses brushing clumsily, their breaths shared.  He grins down at Zayn, watches him lick away the taste of Liam’s cigarettes from his lips.  His thumb slides to the corner of Zayn’s mouth to part his lips and there’s a candy tongue pressed to white teeth when he smiles back at Liam.

“It’s a habit.”

“I know,” Zayn says, a little cocky but still undeniably uncertain.  “S’okay.”

“I can give you your own nickname, if that helps?”

“You don’t have to,” Zayn says quickly, a stuttered giggle following.

Liam snorts, crinkles his eyes and nose with a smile he can’t help.  He kisses those saccharine lips red and swollen, teeth replacing Zayn’s along the bottom one.

“No, I like that idea,” Liam suggests, their knees knocking and hands finding all of those intimate spots Liam hates for anyone to touch – anyone without value.  He shuffles inward, swaying to the orchestra of passing cars below.  “What would y’like?”

Zayn wrinkles his brow, considers the idea for a long beat while his fingers disappear under the cuff of Liam’s jumper.

“You’re Batman, right?”

Liam laughs, deep and fuzzy.  He nods with his forehead pressed to Zayn’s, reaches for another kiss.

“Don’t tell me you wanna be Selina Kyle?” Liam teases, catching Zayn’s bottom lip before he can jerk back.

Zayn whines, sighs into another kiss.  “Fuck off – “

“Language,” Liam warns in this taunting voice that blooms fresh pink to Zayn’s cheeks.

Zayn licks away a smile, tilts his head.  “I’ve always fancied Robin.  Like, he’s a proper good guy and has a neat backstory – “

“It’s a bit weird, innit?  I dunno if it’s proper for Batman to _fuck_ Robin,” Liam wonders, shifting a hand down to cup at Zayn’s arse, grinning when Zayn’s hips instantly cant up against his.

“We haven’t – “

“You know what I mean,” Liam groans.  “It’s just sort of weird.”

Zayn fixes a serious expression to his face, knocks Liam back a little with a mild scowl.  “There are a hundred articles and theories and explainable occurrences between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson that imply a sexual history established long before this modern incarnation of the dark knight and I think – “

Liam kisses the rest of the words off of Zayn’s lips, chases the syllables with his tongue, bites away all of the neatly placed vowels and presses fingers to the thick hair at the nape of Zayn’s neck until he complies, goes pliant in his arms.

“I don’t know what half of those words meant,” Liam laughs with their lips still brushing, their hearts still aligned in synchronized chords, “but okay, you win, babe.  I mean – I mean, _boy wonder_.”

“Boy wonder,” Zayn repeats, a little happily.

“Yeah,” Liam smiles, pressing his forehead to Zayn’s again.  “You can be my boy wonder.”

There’s a flash of something apprehensive across Zayn’s face, eyes lowered, thick lashes fanning darkly over his cheeks.

“I should go but – “

Liam can hear it in his voice – the tension.  The fear.  And he knows he’s abandoning everything he stands for, everything he promised himself on this long path toward a dream but he’s willing to swallow down those acidic, awful thoughts to brave whatever this is between them –

And he can hear Louis and his rudely placed _fucking idiot_ in his head, echoing around in his skull, but he’s almost willing just to see how deep this ocean stretches.

He kisses Zayn as an in-between, a pause between the words neither of them say.  He promises to call, shoves up the sleeve of his borrowed Henley to expose Zayn’s clean, unscarred skin and uses a spare Sharpie to scribble his number across the smooth canvas.  He smiles and swears Zayn can call him whenever.

“See,” Liam exclaims giddily, almost smearing the drying ink as he drags his thumb over the numbers, “now you know it’s a promise ‘cause I gave you _my_ number.  So just – I dunno, call me, okay?”

Zayn nods, struggling to hide his smile.  He presses up on his toes and Liam inclines just slightly to meet him midway for a chaste kiss.  Just a small reminder.

Just an _‘until next time’_ that Liam swore he wouldn’t associate with casual fucks and repeat performances.

 

|*|

 

They’re all sharing plates of scrambled eggs, bowls of mixed fruit, crispy bacon and mixing tart orange juice with hot coffee on Louis’ oversized bed – because Louis’ not their _official leader_ but he’s the eldest and the most convincing when it comes to persuading the hotel staff into upgrading his sleeping arrangements – with reruns of _Doctor Who_ on the television and the sun a shiny halo in a calm blue sky.

Louis’ only got one sock on, Harry has fresh raspberry-colored bruises over his shoulder, and Niall’s hair is standing tall without any product.  They’re all still a little drowsy, soothing each other with touches and mild, comforting words between commercials with the world around them buzzing.

“Smashing night?” Louis asks between sips of coffee, pressing hot kisses to Harry’s temple and using his bare foot to tickle Niall’s stomach between the sheets.

“Bloody wonderful,” Harry laughs hard, the echo of it above Niall’s grumbling.

He rolls to his back, spreads wide like a starfish in a pair of loose plaid boxers and there’s really not enough room for all of their limbs but Liam doesn’t mind Harry’s calf in his lap or his hand in Niall’s hair or an inked-up forearm across Louis’ chest.

Louis shifts down the bed, snuggles into the hollow Liam offers him and they share bites of toast until the crumbs between them itch their skin.

“What was that Niall?” Louis inquires with a knowing grin, shoving his big toe into Niall’s hip.

“Oi, fuck off,” Niall hisses but he burrows into Harry’s side and steals Liam’s glass of orange juice, opening his mouth for the green grapes Harry feeds him.  “I should’ve picked the older twin last night.”

Harry huffs out a laugh, pushing into the fingers Louis brushes over the hearty muscle of his calf.  “Bro, she was _eight minutes_ older.”

Niall arches an eyebrow, slurping down juice.  “Exactly,” he sighs, tangling pale fingers into his hair, “And that why’s she lasted _twenty_ minutes longer that my date.  It’s called maturity, my friend.”

Liam wheezes a laugh into Louis’ shoulder with fingers sliding over the knobs in his spine.

“It’s called bullshit,” Louis grins.  “You’re just a poor performer in bed, my sweet Nialler.”

“Fuck right,” Harry crows and Niall offers them both two fingers, rolling his eyes.

“Shut it Styles,” Louis warns with a curvy smile, “because I’ve heard you’re not so brilliant either.  Still lots to learn my young grasshopper.”

Harry makes a face while Niall presses echoing giggling into his bare shoulder.

“Is that an offer?”

Louis gasps mockingly, shoving his foot into Harry’s face and Liam crawls away before the pillows start launching, sheets tangling around arms and legs and he snatches his phone from the car wreck of squirming boys with Louis straddling Harry’s hips and Niall’s head caught somewhere between a pair of thighs.

It vibrates between his fingers when he slips into the hallway and he smiles down at the screen, at the unknown number.  He tries to swipe it away – the grin, not the call – and he knows better than to answer an unidentifiable caller – another well-taught lesson via Harry Styles and Twitter – but something warm, affectionate glows in the pit of his stomach and he wants to blame that on the eggs but he thumbs the answer button instead and crowds down onto the stiff hotel carpet with a grin.

“Hi,” he says immediately, catching the little hitch in Zayn’s voice from the other side.

“Hey,” Zayn mumbles, tongue caught on something else and bottom lip obviously shoved between sharp teeth, “is it too early to ring you?”

Liam laughs with this sleep-heavy tone that reminds him of good dreams and a lie-in during summer holidays.  His skin prickles up in this undisguisable form and he glances left and right for security before replying, “Not when it’s you, boy wonder.”

There’s a sobering giggle on the other end, something sweeter than cartoonish _Romeo and Juliet_ films and Liam tips his head back against the wall to knock those thoughts away.

“Vas happenin’,” Zayn laughs, his voice breathy and alive in ways Liam doesn’t remember any of his mates having.

Liam snorts, drags his forearm over his nose to buzz away the tickle.  “How’s life?  What’re you up to, babe?”

Zayn groans – sugary and immature rather than that staccato falsetto he remembers from the night before with his knees pressed to the mattress and his hole fluttering over Liam’s tongue – before sighing impatiently.

“Just chilling,” he replies, with that still put upon tone like he’s simply too cool for oxygen and sunshine.  But there’s a smile in his voice, a bashful ring to his words that weighs through his thick accent.  “Sitting ‘round my room and stuff.  Like – I mean, like, I’m just chilling here.”

Liam hums his approval, sucks in a calm breath while trying not to stir memories of his own childish bedroom with the silly bunny curtains and peeling paint and broken fence just outside his window.  He strings fingers through his thick hair, over the buzzed sides and patterns his breathing to Zayn’s just that easily.

“Sounds nice,” Liam smiles, presses the heart of it into his forearm just to subdue it.

“I was thinking,” Zayn starts with this reveling excitement that Liam feels through his veins and it’s such a stupid thing but he leans in like Zayn’s close enough, like all of his attention is for this boy, “I was thinking, like, I’m gonna sit around and watch all of the old _Spider-Man_ films but, like, in order of worst to best villain.”

“Sandman first, obviously,” Liam giggles, shifting on the stiff carpet, dragging his fingers over the mosaic design.

Zayn snorts and Liam licks his own lips with a need to kiss off the grin he knows Zayn’s wearing.

“The second film last,” Zayn whispers, like he’s embarrassed, like he hasn’t told anyone this.  “I think Doc Oct is so complex.  Nothing tops him.”

“But the Green Goblin – “

Zayn moans, whines and Liam stammers on a breath imagining the way that noise alone would vibrate against his skin, the two of them tangled in sheets with a bowl of popcorn and low lighting and soft kisses that would rival all of Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s.

“Doctor Octopus was gangster, _Leeyum_ , c’mon man,” Zayn huffs, lips obviously curved into a grin.

Liam nods to himself, shuts his eyes and palms his cock – his mind clouded by the way his name sounds so foreign and exotic on Zayn’s pink tongue.  He wants it between the hollows of his body, against fresh hotel sheets, under the weight of Liam’s body with their muscles flexing together and bodies twining just so Liam could push in deeper –

He shudders and catches the music in the background of Zayn’s phone, hums along to the Usher as a diversion.

“You think we can hang again, soon?” Zayn asks in this heavy, throaty, increasingly muted voice.

Liam winces, looks around again and the hallways are empty except for housekeeping carts.

“Sure,” Liam says, cradling the phone between his shoulder and ear.  He closes his eyes on the happy sigh Zayn releases.  “I mean, we’ve got loads of rehearsals before the tour starts up in a week.  I think I heard something about us doing Chatty Man, but I dunno.  Suppose I could figure something out, right?”

“I don’t want to,” Zayn stumbles, a lump somewhere clouding up his words, “I don’t want to be a bother.  Not like I’m anybody important.  Quite silly, innit?”

Liam scowls, catches that almost defensive boy in his voice.  That put upon confidence that Liam’s sure Zayn wears like a flashy leather jacket for everyone to view but it’s cheap.  It’s not him.  And Liam, unconsciously, wants to shake all of that armor away and dust off the insecurities until Zayn is himself again.

“Hey,” he says calmly, listens for that little pitch in Zayn’s breathing, “I’ll make time.  For you, boy wonder, ‘kay?  Let me figure it out.”

There’s a quiet exhale on the other end, a heartbeat of silence, before Zayn whispers, “Thanks.”

“Text me later,” Liam says rather than asks, waits until the tremble leaves Zayn’s voice and smiles into the phone when Zayn agrees, ending the call and dropping the phone between his bare feet on the carpet.

He sits with his forearms on his bent knees, staring at the phone, at the carpet, at the nothingness.  Except, it’s not that anymore – it’s _something_.  Warm and alive and aching from his chest to his stomach.  It’s a feeling he remembers at seventeen, with Danielle, and again at eighteen with that one bloke he dated secretly for a month – all snogs and quiet love bites and handjobs and late-night phone calls that Liam smiled through – and it’s too quick.

He doesn’t even know this bloke.  Not from a nameless fuck between cities or a pretty face at a bar or a familiar set of lips from someone he’s kissed in a drunken haze.

But Zayn feels like that tight, small ball of energy that expands inside of your chest when you least expect it.  That high before the crash.  That song on the radio you sing along to even though you swear you hate it.

That whispered mantra in the dark that _you’re amazing, you’re beautiful, you’re the world_ because it’s true.

And he swallows that knot in his throat, stares at the phone and pretends not to want to add Zayn’s name to his contacts – with emoji’s and _‘Boy Wonder,’_ capitalized – and, behind his eyelids, he can still see that awed face when Liam swallowed him whole and that tear in his armor when Liam kissed him slow on the overpass.

He _can’t_ get rid of it – he doesn’t think he’s trying to, either.

It’s not the rough clearing of a throat that shakes him.  It’s the foot nudging his hip and a familiar hum of disapproval like being caught wanking off to cheap internet porn.  It’s Louis and his crooked grin and narrowed blue eyes and wrinkled up Blondie t-shirt that rides up his torso and shows off his tummy.

Louis sucks in a sharp breath like he’s preparing for a monologue or a speech or just to annoy Liam before he says, “I thought we had rules, mate.”

Liam looks away but his mouth curves up, thoughtlessly, and he drags a finger over his lock screen just for the image of four stupid boys before the world swallowed them whole.

“ _I_ have rules,” he corrects, cocks his head back when Louis slides down the wall next to him.  “You bunch of tossers just shag whatever’s available.”

Louis’ gasp is dramatic and so completely _Louis Tomlinson_ that Liam can’t bite back his laugh.

“My dear Leeymo, I’m in a relationship,” Louis argues unconvincingly.

“S’that what you call it?”

Louis snorts, spring-like fingers crawling up Liam’s bare forearm, over scripted ink on the underside.

“Okay, fine you twat, I am in a _domesticated situation_ as per Google,” Louis sighs, rolling his eyes.  “But that doesn’t make me any less of a dedicated lad when she’s around.”

Liam agrees silently, smirking.  He remembers the last tour and far too much whiskey in Dublin and waking up to some redheaded bloke with constellation-like freckles over his bare shoulders going down on Louis in this enthusiastically loud manner.  And, belatedly, he remembers Louis having tea and lunch with Eleanor three hours later under a wide blue sky with a smile and adoring fingers tugging through her hair for a messy kiss.

“Was he or she any good?” Louis wonders, knocking his elbow while Harry sings the 1975 loudly up the hallway.

Liam smiles to himself, feels the beat of blush high on his cheeks but he refuses to give into Louis’ pandering.

“Brilliant,” he whispers, longing to attach _‘unforgettable’_ to his tongue, “but that doesn’t matter.”

“Right,” Louis hums, padding his feet on the carpet to Harry’s voice, “because you don’t get attached, remember?”

“M’not,” Liam grumbles with a scowl.

Louis smiles, wide and unrelenting, leaning in to brush it against Liam’s cheek.  His breath is hot, damp against Liam’s ear with his fingers scratching something in Morse code to his skin before he chimes, “Good.  So bring the puppy home to meet the family.”

Liam swats him away, groans when Louis’ cackle echoes over the walls as he scampers across the carpet to chase Harry into his room, the door slamming and unmistakable moaning following the thwack of a body to the hotel wall.  He feels his blood shift the wrong way, glares at his phone like he can mentally make it explode before his fingers can reach it but –

He feels daft and fucking sixteen again, serenading some dumb girl with Mario to win her heart, but his cheeks smear up an ungodly pink and his fingers twitch for a morning cigarette, lungs desperate and burning before he thumbs out a message half of him regrets –

_can you comeee down to the studio todayyy for rehearsals??? round 3? Gottt a frank ocean tune in me head cuz of you ha_

– and the other half of him glows when his phone buzzes immediately: _yes and do you not think so far ahead? Aha xx Z_.

He grins down at the screen, shoves his phone over his throbbing cock and waits until this dizzying feeling stops making him so lightheaded.

 

|*|

 

Their rehearsal space is all mirrors, wood panels, a glossy dance space that they don’t really use and secondhand band equipment that they toy with between sets.  The sound system is expensive – and _untouchable_ , as ruled by Paul immediately – and their in-ears haven’t arrived yet so they tune their voices halfway through songs with stupid grins because it reminds them of that first tour after the show when they were still a little unknown, still too green for fancy lighting and pyrotechnics.

They’re deciding between songs, scattered across the room and trying to shout over the Alanis Morissette Harry blares in the background – because, admittedly, Harry is overly enthusiastic about female power anthems and _Lilith Fair_ even though he wasn’t old enough for any of it – when Paddy shuffles Zayn in the room.  He looks nervous and terrified and tugs on his stupid snapback until it ruins his hair and Liam, helplessly, grins from a corner while Louis chases Lux and Niall tunes his guitar –

And he won’t call it serendipitous, not yet at least, when that one song he remembers from long drives from Wolverhampton to London with his family floats in and _‘you’ve already won me over in spite of me and don’t be alarmed if I fall head over feet’_ vibrates through his blood like a warning.

Like a palm reading.

Like an indefinite future.

“Shut the fuck up,” Louis shrieks and Liam thumps his shoulder with a fist immediately.

“Don’t you take a piss at him,” he hisses when he tugs himself away from the worn down leather couch in the corner, kicking away the football Lux has been chasing.

Harry arches an eyebrow, singing into a hairbrush while Lou sighs in the background.  He trades glances between Liam’s stained-pink cheeks and Zayn’s nervous bottom lip between teeth and Liam swears he sees that moment of clarity when it passes over Harry’s face –

It comes in the shape of a smile and wide eyes and an extended brow that pushes his hairline back.

“Is that the takeaway kid?” Niall mumbles when Liam passes.

“There goes my hero,” Louis sings with this cheeky grin that’s telling.

“Watch him as he goes,” Harry joins in and Liam spins around to flip the three of them off before greeting Zayn in the doorway.

“You okay?” he asks immediately when Zayn won’t stop fidgeting, looking around, hiding half of his face behind Liam’s body.

Zayn nods, lip still clipped by his teeth, his skin a shade paler.

It twists in Liam’s organs, the need to save this boy, to distract the others, to drag Zayn into an empty room and kiss him into the calm – into steady breathing.

“Hi,” Liam says instead with a twisted, goofy smile that knocks the stiffness from Zayn’s bones.  He edges a hand over Zayn’s waist, feels the shift of muscles and the relaxed tendons and Zayn breathes out a grin.

“Hey.”

“ _Oh sweetheart_ ,” Louis calls from halfway across the room with a grin, huddled into Harry’s lap with Niall wedged into their sides and Liam grimaces at the sweet, sugary tone of his voice.

He twists his fingers around Zayn’s shaking ones, squeezes tightly until Zayn lifts his chin and Liam hopes, quietly, that those focused eyes are finding their own yellow brick road when Zayn smiles softly.

“Ready to meet the lads?” he asks, thumbing over Zayn’s knuckles and giving him just enough space.

Zayn fits his feet between Liam’s, almost chest to chest, nervously steps up onto his toes to kiss Liam and it feels like the breaking of a tide against your skin – unexpected and thrilling and memorable – so Liam kisses back until he feels Zayn’s smile against his mouth.

“They’re gonna eat me alive,” Zayn whispers, gnawing his lip red.

“I’ll protect you, boy wonder,” he says back, noses brushing, over the wolf-whistles and cat calls and obscenely erotic noises provided by the others.

“Didn’t say I needed any help,” Zayn replies, cocky and smug but his stupid smirk gives him away.  “I’m from Bradford.  From what I saw on the show, this lot is a bunch of crybabies.”

Liam wriggles his eyebrows, pushes down for another quick kiss before mumbling, “Admit it then – you watched us.  You’re really a creepy fan.”

Something harsh and scarlet spreads from Zayn’s cheeks to his neck, just beneath the loose collar of his graffiti-painted shirt and Liam brushes a laugh against his lips, tugs him towards the others and holds his breath until Zayn squeezes his hand back.

“Lads, this is Zayn,” Liam announces, his chest puffed out like he’s mocking them, daring them to take a piss at him.

“I’m Harry,” Harry says instantly, reaching out and shaking Zayn’s spare hand.

Niall mumbles something around a mouthful of crisps, wiping his grease over Zayn’s knuckles when their hands touch.

“Zayn, right,” Louis grins, wagging his eyebrows and curving his mouth out deceptively.  “Cheers, mate.  You look – “

“Tommo,” Liam growls and Louis winks at him.

“I was gonna say _fit_ , Li.  Christ, too much late night _Teen Wolf_ for you,” Louis laughs, sliding out of Harry’s lap and making a small space for Zayn to fit into.

“Sick hat,” Niall grins, stealing it from Zayn’s head for his own while passing over his bag of crisps and Liam swears it’s some sort of rite of passage – Niall’s own form of communication, his subtle declaration of friendship and companionship.

“Thanks,” Zayn laughs, wincing a little when Louis glares at him and Harry fits long fingers into his thick half-quiff.

“Nice hair,” Harry adds with this cherry-stained smile, “Nice eyes too.  You must have a nice cock, also, if Li keeps you around.”

Liam yelps, kicks at Harry’s ankle and the echoing laughter from the three drowns out the rattle of Liam’s heart.

“It’s alright, I think,” Zayn shrugs with an uneasy smirk, loosening to the roaming hands and constant stares he receives.  “Average, I s’ppose.”

“I like this one,” Louis proclaims with a sloppy smirk, “He’s proud of his cock and not ashamed to be seen with our poor Payno.  Are you any good at blowjobs is the true defining moment, innit though?  We lot – “

“Speak for yer’selves,” Niall argues with a frown.

“ – are madly and decisively proud of our ability to suck a lad off without complaints,” Louis finishes, leaning in to smother his smirk to Zayn’s cheek.

Zayn stammers, twists his fingers in his lap and Liam groans into the spare fabric of his singlet, feels an urgent need to knock them all away and whispers lines from _Batman Begins_ in Zayn’s ear to stop the obvious race of his heart.

“I dunno,” Zayn says with a half-shrug, looking at his feet.  “I’m not all that practiced yet.”

Harry giggles while Louis nods along, looking serious and patient and three-fourths sincere.

“Brilliant,” he cheers, overlapping Harry’s hand in Zayn’s hair.  “We shall teach you like we are teaching sweet Nialler – “

“I am into the _women_ , Lou.  Pussy.  Cunt.  I like getting my nut off between a nice pair of fake tits,” Niall groans, swatting their hands away and curling a protective arm around Zayn –

And Niall has always been that – the giver.  The adoring one.  Too sweet and far too naïve to be anything other than a slice of sunshine in the middle of their riotous storm.

“If you’re quite finished,” Louis hisses, narrowing his eyes at Niall but it never lasts long before he’s grinning and rubbing tenderly at Niall’s knee, “I’m certain, at one point, Elton John was too, Horan.  Doesn’t mean you can’t learn to take a good dick in your throat.”

Niall shoots him a wide-eyed glare while Harry quickly cups Lux’s ears and something knocks Liam’s breath away when Zayn grins, pushes further into Niall’s embrace with a quiet laugh that tremors all over Liam’s skin.

He can’t get this boy out of his head –

And he thinks, in the darkest places, he quite likes that.

 

|*|

 

They spend a better part of an hour rehearsing harmonies and working through silly warm-up numbers while Zayn watches from the leather couch, feet under him and mouthing along to all of the words like he’s filling in all of the tenor parts Louis’ voice gives out on.  Liam catches him with a sideways smirk and Zayn bites down on a chapped lip with an abashed grin, fringe sliding into his eyes and cheeks worn pink by the blush.  Liam sings half of his lines _at him_ while Louis shines his camera on Zayn like a tiny spotlight with Harry and Niall dragging their voices low like silly background singers.

The smile he gets in return is three-quarters beautiful and Liam’s heart catches on the _‘let me be your last first kiss’_ because it was cheesy the first forty times he sung it but, with Zayn cocking his head sideways and losing a note when their eyes meet, he thinks it just might be the kind of words he’ll etch over his skin just under the _‘everything I ever wanted but nothing I’ll ever need.’_

Afterwards, Harry passes out flavored vitamin waters for hydration while Louis counters them with sour neon candies just for the disapproving headshake Harry gives him.  Niall plucks a few tunes out on his guitar, shirtless with a wide, upside down smile for Josh’s drumming in the background.  They splay across the couch and the carpet next to it, three to two, with Zayn propped between Niall and Liam and Harry sprawled across Louis’ lap like it’s the only home he knows.

“Zayn,” Niall serenades between Jason Mraz and old David Bowie songs, “have ye ever been in love?”

The question startles Liam, stills his fingers in the thick hair at the back of Zayn’s head and Zayn almost, almost chokes on his sour lemonade water, half-turning away from Liam to hide his expression.

“Christ, is Nialler baked again?” Louis inquires with a chuckle, tossing back cherry-flavored candies and leaving behind all of the green apple ones for Harry to beam over.

“Are you proper stoned Horan?  Your nan would not approve,” Harry admonishes with a wide grin and fingers ghosting up the curly hairs on Louis’ legs, thumbing over the worthless tattoos he’s inked there.

Niall moans obscenely, tongue licking away a smirk.  “Lads, lads,” he huffs, still plucking out a few notes that sound like an odd combination between Amy Winehouse and Maroon 5, “Not before the tour, yeah?  I save all of the good shit for the long trips on the bus with you lot.”

“Amsterdam,” Louis smirks, fisting Harry’s curls between his fingers.

Harry cranes his neck back with a silent groan, steals the blue raspberry candies from Louis’ collection.  “Remember Glasgow?”

Liam tries not to – passing around two joints outside of the arena, a thick cloud of grey keeping them laced together, that lightheaded feeling like you’re on the verge of floating but your feet never leave the ground, chasing the buzz like fireflies circling a bonfire on the beach – and brushes the late stubble on his jaw across Zayn’s shoulder.

“Well, I guess,” Zayn starts, looking wary and self-conscious with three pairs of eyes on him – and Liam’s fingers still stroking the start of a tattoo just beneath his shirt – and his teeth automatically catch his lip before he adds, “I dunno – I don’t think I have.  Never been in a proper relationship, y’know.  Just like, messed about and stuff, so – “

Zayn takes one of those long, swallowing breaths like the words are too big for his mouth and his heart is colossal in his chest and his hands won’t stop moving.

“S’okay,” Liam whispers across the rim of his ear and, he didn’t notice last night, but Zayn smells like autumn – all crisp cinnamon and golden leaves and sweetly ripe apples and September – and it’s entrancing enough that he misses the way Zayn ducks his head.

“They’re just taking a piss at you, babe.  Don’t worry.”

Zayn nods with a stifled laugh and Harry mocks it while Louis reaches out to cup fingers around Zayn’s ankle, under his jeans and sliding between his high tops for the bare skin, a connection –

A – _stop, do not pass, he’s just a fuck_ interjects before Liam can fit the right word or adjective or foreign language that will sound accurate over his tongue.

Niall tunes up an old Cyndi Lauper tune and Harry croons _‘I can see your true colors shining through’_ in between beats while Louis grins down at him and Liam nudges a little closer to Zayn.

“You’re doing good,” he promises, stroking the shivers from Zayn’s hands.

“Am I?”

Liam giggles with crinkly eyes and a broad smile he can’t abandon and he falters on those eyes – _harvest gold_ , he remembers – when they’re framed perfectly by thick eyelashes.

In the silence, which doesn’t last long because Harry and Louis shout stupid lines from _Crazy Stupid Love_ at each other and Niall rocks out a ratty rendition of ‘Red Eyes’ for Josh and the band, they curl around each other and Liam soothes a hand up and down Zayn’s thigh until it’s less erotic and more – _comforting_?  He can’t find the word or the definition but it doesn’t matter when Zayn pushes into the touch and hides his face in the shadows under Liam’s jaw.  They create a perimeter around themselves with empty Gatorade bottles and half-eaten takeaway containers Paul ordered up between _What Makes You Beautiful_ and a few of their newer songs and Liam tells Zayn all of his favorite memories from the show, from the first tour, from seeing the world when he’s still not certain he deserved a fourth of the view, and he thinks he loves Zayn’s smile when he talks about watching _Thor_ at three in the morning while drunk off sugary rum the most.

“I like to skateboard,” Zayn admits quietly, blindly tracing all of Liam’s ink – and Liam dips auxiliary fingers beneath a waistband to sketch out the Chinese on Zayn’s hip in time with their breathing – while biting down on his smile just to contain it.

He can feel an energy from Zayn, a youth, a reckless freedom Liam doesn’t remember having – not at seventeen and the world collapsing around you.

“Are you any good?” Liam asks into Zayn’s hair, bracketing Zayn’s hips with his thighs, nosing along his neck.

Zayn shrugs, laughs with a wrinkled nose and scrunched eyes.  “Sort of.  Not really.  I’m probably shit but I’m much better than my mate Ant.  He does a sick half-turn on the board though.”

Liam nods, dry lips skimming over Zayn’s temple.  It’s oddly intimate, the way they keep finding their own rhythm, learning their touches, the differences between their calloused fingers, and he hasn’t felt this way since –

She was never just a fuck, right?  Not entirely but she was a heartbreak and an excuse to scream _fuck you_ at the world and a reason to shave his hair, mark his skin, a horrible idea he returned to too many times between tours.

“I read _Year One_ six times on the last tour,” Liam breathes to escape those thoughts, dark and twisted and still a little haunting.  “Don’t ask me why.”

“Because it was sick,” Zayn snickers, tipping his head back and the edge of his smile is so natural now.  There’s a lack of cockiness, unnecessary sharpness like he’s still proving himself to everyone.

“It was,” Liam agrees, tilting down to mouth _‘better than the film’_ to Zayn’s lips and he could – he could snog him and push him down into the cheap leather and see how much he could tease before Zayn squirmed but he likes this vulnerable view a little more.

He likes the way Zayn’s tongue flicks out to wet both of their lips and the wrinkles just around his eyes and the flutter of his lashes like he’s exposed.

Like Liam’s not meant to see this.

“How long is the tour?” Zayn wonders during their extended breaths, dizzying stares.

“Ten months, give or take,” Liam replies, still smiling just near Zayn’s lips.  “The higher=up’s keeping adding dates.  Think you’d like to see a show?”

Zayn snorts, shakes his head.  “Not really a fan – “

“Bullshit,” Liam laughs, echoes the noise in Zayn’s mouth when he kisses away the scoff on Zayn’s lips.  “You know all of our music.”

“Me sisters.”

“You know my audition song,” he teases back, flicking Zayn’s nose.

“Again, bratty little sisters,” Zayn cackles, tricking fingers up Liam’s neck, over his birthmark, across his spit-shiny lips.

“You know I’m pretty good at sucking cock,” Liam whispers against Zayn’s mouth, never kissing, just breathing.

There’s a burn over Zayn’s cheeks, a confined yelp in his throat, a wiry body squirming in his lap and Liam pinches a hip to steady him.

“I never said you were any good,” Zayn heaves out, a half-attempt at playing coy that Liam almost believes.

“Would you like me to try again just to see if I can remind you?” Liam teases over Zayn’s pink lips, his thumb catching on the stubborn scruff on Zayn’s jaw.  Their noses brush at this awkward angle and Zayn – he stops breathing for a second, corners a groan with his tongue and nods gently.

“I can do other things, boy wonder,” Liam promises, chasing Zayn’s gasp with a slippery kiss, “Guess you’ll have to find out, later, maybe?”

Zayn groans, frustrated, dragging trembling fingers through Liam’s hair, tugging sharply on the ends.

“C’mon,” Liam whispers and it’s not quite a plea but so close, too close.  “Come to one of our shows.  Bring your sisters.  Fuck, the entire family if y’want.  Just come.”

“When you play in London?” Zayn asks, pulling back.

Liam’s mouth curves upward, his thumb knocking Zayn’s chin up.  “Or whenever.  Think your parents will let you overnight with us?  I’ll be a complete gentleman if you’d like me to meet them and – “

Zayn whimpers, biting down roughly on his bottom lip.  “My baba would shit himself and my mum – she’d never believe it was you.”

“But would they let you?” Liam asks, filtering through Niall’s raspy voice and Harry’s squeals and Zayn’s ragged breathing.

Zayn licks the shyness from his lips, unavoidable looks exchanged and certifiably talented fingers press at that soft spot behind Liam’s ear before he replies, “I can try – if you really want me to.”

Liam doesn’t tell him, not aloud, how he does but something uncertain shoves at him.  A pressure against his bones.  A little reminder that echoes loudly –

_Just a fuck, right?_

He blinks at Zayn, nods slowly, and talks about his dog Loki to keep his mind off of what he’s not certain he really wants.

 

|*|

 

“Why do you lot stay in a hotel rather than at your own flats before a tour?” Zayn asks with a crooked smile.

The room is still spinning and Zayn’s still glowing from his post-orgasm high.  They’re sweaty against the sheets, limbs anchored to the bed by twisted cotton and stretches of skin are still exposed, naked and flushed.  Liam admires the love bites his mouth left behind across the back of Zayn’s shoulder, just below his collarbone and the ink there.  Their bare toes are brushing in the ocean of sheets and Zayn’s hair is wrecked, a goofy smile on his lips from the things Liam’s mouth did to him.

He likes how Zayn’s a little more pliant, how he barely lasted ten minutes when Liam yanked him out of his clothes and shoved him onto the bed.  There was something carnal in his eyes when he kissed Liam and, this time, he refused to restrain his keens and spilled shamefully over Liam’s lips thirty seconds into the blowjob.  Liam loves the way his cheeks burned but he crawled into Liam’s lap, licking tentatively around the head and spreading the precome with his tongue before wanking Liam off to a messy orgasm, their breaths caught between a kiss they couldn’t quite complete.

Zayn is playful now, chasing all of Liam’s goosebumps with his fingers and hiding starburst like kisses across Liam’s hollows before spreading on his stomach over the linen, arse uncovered and the shiny line of his spine so inviting.

Liam grins, tiptoes resilient fingers over Zayn’s shoulder blade before rolling closer.

“Before we were, I dunno – “

“Massive?  Incredibly adored?  Britain’s sweethearts?” Zayn offers with a smug grin that Liam rubs away with sticky fingers.

“ _One Direction_ ,” he finishes, taken aback by Zayn’s sweet laughter, “We would camp out in hotels all across Europe, even here.  Just before a tour, we’d rent out a floor for us and the band and just bleed out the world because we knew we wouldn’t be by ourselves, in our own homes for months.  So it stuck – two weeks before every tour, we lock ourselves away and get used to the feeling of never being alone.”

Zayn smiles into the sheets, crawls a little closer.  “And you’re okay with that?  Not being alone?  At your own flat with your dog and your own bed?”

Liam shrugs, shifts down into the valley of sheets and pillows constructed around them like a protective barricade.  He breathes over Zayn’s skin to see the way it trembles, kisses away the tightness.

“S’not so bad,” Liam whispers, inhaling autumn air and long walks in a park and pumpkin scents that are hidden under the musky scent of their after-the-war aroma across Zayn’s skin.  He looks up through his lashes with a lazy grin when Zayn cocks his head sideways.  “I miss home, sometimes.  But those three boys are – they’re my home, Zayn.”

Zayn nods, pressing his chin to Liam’s shoulder and he swears he hears _‘I want to be your home one day’_ but he thinks it’s too soon, not realistic.

Things like that don’t even happen in those stupid romantic comedies Harry makes them suffer through during long drives across the countryside.

He can still see the adrenaline moving through Zayn’s blood, that neon sharp brightness he associates with fireworks or newly deflowered virgins.  His eyes are still dilated, a hunger still not reached and Liam tentatively strides fingers down Zayn’s spine to calm him.

“Hey,” Zayn whispers, mischief overriding the syrupy throb of his voice.

“Hi,” Liam smiles back, nudging closer.

“Can we have another go?” Zayn asks around a swallow, something caught in the back of his throat like his confidence won’t quite breach the surface.  “I mean – can I like, um, can I try sucking you off a little?”

Liam stares at him with a flicked up eyebrow.  He watches Zayn lick the dryness from his sugary lips and those uncertain fingers floating over the sheets – because Zayn doesn’t know how to swim and it’s one of ten things Liam learned on the van ride back to the hotel, between kisses and uncontrollable hands – until they press over Liam’s collarbone.

Zayn clears his throat, still raspy from post-snogging smokes behind the hotel.  “I’m probably not gonna be that good at it.  Like, I just – _please_?  I sort of want to.”

There’s a tremble from his neck to his fingertips at the sound of Zayn’s husky, scratchy, needy voice.  He plays it off with a coy expression, wriggling his eyebrows at the boy while cocking his legs apart in a move that’s meant to be obscene but he can’t quite pull the trick off.  Instead, he cups a hand over his slowly fattening cock and bites filthily at his bottom lip until Zayn squeaks, crawls the short distance separating them.

“C’mon boy wonder,” Liam encourages, fascinated by the dark rims of Zayn’s irises and those stealthy hands that map out galaxies over Liam’s skin in seconds.

It’s something in his blood when Zayn surges up for a quick kiss, fingers catching the nape of his neck just so Liam can prolong it – just so he can sneak a spare hand between them to feel out the shape of Zayn’s cock, the way it curves indecently towards his belly and leaks over the pad of his thumb.  He fits Zayn between his legs and considers playing nonchalant about all of it, letting Zayn have the control he can feel seeping from his cells but he thinks Zayn deserves a little more –

He’s an unexplored island and Liam, _fuck_ , Liam wants to be the first to name all of the geographical locations and plot the cities he can build, the temples he can erect over this skin.

He knocks Zayn off of his knees, thrusts all of his strength into his arms to twist them about on the bed.  He moves against Zayn’s axis, against his naturally lithe body until they’re opposite each other and lying on their sides.  Until his head is between Zayn’s thighs and Zayn is _right there_ , lips so close to Liam’s leaking cock that it’s almost photogenic –

All porn star lips and tentative tongue and long eyelashes shadowing his cheeks and scattered hair from Liam’s fingers latching on immediately.

“This is called – “

Zayn grunts, bites a mark into the inside of Liam’s thigh with a laugh.  “I know what this is called, you idiot.  I’ve seen porn.”

Liam giggles, distracts Zayn with a long lick to counter the way his fingers stroke affectionately over his balls, to the tight skin just behind them.

“Brilliant,” Liam pants, curling the tip of his tongue to catch a drop of precome – it’s like sea salt and barely tempered caramel and _incredible_ – before mouthing over the head.  “Rule number one – porn is fake.  S’nothing like real life.”

Zayn hums, nodding, cautiously fitting his lips around the pink head visible behind the foreskin.  He’s blatantly nervous, anxious, a little enthusiastic with the stroke of his tongue.

“Rule number two,” Liam beams, feeling foolish for trying to educate this boy when all his mouth wants to do is hinge open and let Zayn fuck into his throat until his vocal chords are in no condition for tomorrow’s rehearsals, “no teeth.”

Zayn clucks his tongue, scrunches his nose and brow but gently seals his lips over his teeth as he tries to take more in his mouth.

“Gentle and slow,” Liam whispers, thumbing along the throbbing vein on the underside of Zayn’s dick.  “It’s not a rush.”

“Fuck off,” Zayn hisses, hips unconsciously stuttering when he sinks further between Liam’s lips.

Liam pulls off wetly, noisily just for the scandalized reaction he gets from Zayn.  He smiles, laps languidly over the head.  “Just do what y’think feels good, babe.  Trust me – all of it feels good.”

He hisses, struggles to round out the last of his words while Zayn flickers a tongue between the slit.  He strains against instinct, against the muscles and bones, the feverish sweat breaking across his spine.  He wants to dive in, wants to see how much this boy can take –

He wants control and he wants to hear the need in Zayn’s voice.  He wants to hold Zayn down, test his gag reflex, work him into that lightheaded feeling and then draw back to watch the calm return to Zayn’s face.

He wants to know Zayn is _his_ – possessive as that might be – because he never thought Danielle was.

His fingers tangle into Zayn’s hair, to ease him off, to steady the adrenaline in his blood.  His lips curve into a smile around Zayn’s cock, letting the other boy thrust slowly into his mouth, over his tongue.  His free fingers slide back, around the small curve of Zayn’s arse, between the cheeks to feather over his hole.

Zayn groans, loud, gorgeous eyelashes pressed to his cheek with pretty lips stretched around the shaft.  He hollows his cheeks, pulls back a little too quickly.  Liam can tell Zayn’s unsure what to do with the foreskin, drags his fingers from thick, dark hair to pull the extra skin back for Zayn, offering him more of the head and playfully smacks it repeatedly over that stretched tongue.

“Idiot,” Zayn laughs, a choked noise.

Liam grins, watches Zayn wipe the gloss from his mouth with the back of his hand before sliding the head back between his lips.

He lets Zayn find a rhythm, a harmony between mouth and cock and he’s not a natural, not instinctually good at it but his enthusiasm, his need to please Liam anchors all of Liam’s nirvana to his cells.

Between the struggle of _push-and-pull_ and Zayn’s fingers tugging on Liam’s hair, Liam wets a couple of fingers with a slippery tongue.  He kisses along the inside of Zayn’s thighs and listens to the choked noises as Zayn tries to go deeper before, slowly, slipping a finger into Zayn’s hole.

Zayn’s lips twitch, his voice catches on an inhale and he _almost_ chokes but Liam gentles him into submission.  He pulls off Zayn’s cock, working into his first knuckle, before whispering, “D’ya want me to stop?  I can pull out if – “

There’s a noise blurted from Zayn’s lips, muffled by the way he’s still sucking around the head, fingers tightening around the shaft.  There’s a plea in his wide, wide brown eyes and Liam nods at him, twists his finger all the way into the second knuckle before drawing back, fucking into Zayn in cautiously slow strokes.

He watches Zayn’s muscles stretch as he tries to adjust.  He grins against a thigh with wet lips, a tongue licking little mementos into Zayn’s skin as Zayn groans around his cock, grinds down onto the finger until Liam slips in a matching one, stretching him further.  He thinks of the sea and pictures of the California coast just before the dawn and he’s not quite sure anyone has ever been this magical between his legs, under his touch.

Liam gets a little desperate when Zayn’s jaw goes slack.  He’s working him open with fingers and swallowing Zayn whole, lips brushing over the springy hair at the base, and using his spare hand to guide his cock over Zayn’s tongue – not quite too deep, just on the verge of his throat.  He lets Zayn fuck into his mouth in that youthful, spasm-like motion he remembers from inexperienced days in Wolverhampton with drunk university girls.

Zayn’s got plush, swollen lips when he pulls off, scrunched eyes, fingers twisting into the sheets when he’s close.  Liam can feel it – the tremble in his thighs, the twisting muscles of his hole – and he grins around the head, flicks at the sensitive skin just underneath.

Something catches fire down Liam’s spine and he comes between Zayn’s messy fingers.  He loosens his throat and breathes in Zayn’s heady scent with Zayn gasping half-syllables, a foreign language, the heartbeat of Liam’s name.

“What the fuck,” Zayn gasps and Liam sinks into euphoria when Zayn comes hot, thick down his throat.

A little later, when Zayn is still shaking and smiling and kissing gratitude to Liam’s lips – sharing their flavors and grinning like school children because _holy fuck_ – he wraps Zayn into the sheets and mumbles all of the songs he loves best until the moon is high in the sky.

He watches Zayn dress, laughs through fumbled kisses because Zayn still a bit amateurish but such a willing learner, and pretends not to want to walk this boy all the way to the tube just to see the cracked light of street lamps in his eyes.

Instead, he thumbs through his phone, knocks around the hallways while Niall and Harry dance half-naked to old Madonna songs, and finally _breathes_ when his phone vibrates between his palm –

_home!!! can I see you again soon? today was gangsta xx Z_

– and smiles lazily into his sheets for hours afterwards.

 

|*|

 

It’s still the edge of April but the open air in the car park across from the rehearsal studio feels like a burst of summer with its wavering heat and high sun.  He can feel a dozen, maybe more, cameras from invasive fans trapped behind the wired fences a hundred yards away and the sun hangs over the pavement like a wooly jumper.

They’re between practices, abandoning unrealistic choreography and tech rehearsals for bright sunshine and unguarded turf made for pickup football games, with the late afternoon sun chasing shadows across the gravel where Zayn teaches Louis how to ride a longboard and Niall kicks a fresh ball from corner to corner.  He’s stealing sips of water from a bottle, catching breaths between laughs while Louis stumbles and Niall cackles, and he can’t seem to fight off his smile when Zayn grins over his shoulder at him.  It’s this weight on his chest – inescapable, present every time he takes an inhale – that feels solid like rocks and presses like a lack of air pressure.

 _Suffocating_ , he thinks but in those last few seconds before you black out and the world shines bright and new under your eyelids.

He presses his spine into the unforgiving steel fence, pushing up his shiny Aviators to trap the sun while Harry drops down onto the patchy dead grass next to him.  He offers Liam a tilted smirk with a dimple and a Red Bull pressed into Liam’s fingers.

“ _So_ ,” Harry says in this familiar voice that reminds Liam of New Years, rubbishy champagne and shouting from the rooftops, “are we keeping the stray puppy?”

Liam cocks his head back to watch Zayn do a kick-flip and a half-arsed fakie to impress Louis.  He spares a grin behind the can between his fingers, lets the sun burn off half of the creamy blush across his cheeks before turning his head toward Harry.

There’s a thick _‘no’_ on his tongue but it’s not convincing enough with Zayn’s snapback half-cocked on his head and one of Zayn’s beaded bracelets cutting off the circulation around his wrist.  Instead, he sniffs, shrugs and turns back to watch Niall dick about with the football, a cheap imitation of Jenkinson.

“He can do whatever he wants,” Liam replies after a slow breath, trying pathetically to sound careless.

He sips at the sour taste of the Red Bull to avoid the wide-eyed stare Harry shoots him, cocking his head into the fiery overhead light.

“It seems like he wants to stick around,” Harry says, eventually, when his fingers bore of picking at yellowy grass, scratching up Liam’s bare forearm instead.

Liam gives a one-shouldered shrug, slouches further against the bending fence.

“He can’t,” he says after another swallow, tipping his sunglasses down to narrow his eyes at Harry.  “Got a tour and all, right?”

Harry snorts, nods.  “Could bring him along, though.”

“Hazza – “

Harry sighs but there’s still something patient, calm, swallowed in this Zen-like ambiance he swears to keep.  His curls are shoved back by a sweaty bandana and his flannel exposes most of his chest, that unruly stretch of hair just under his navel.  The cool metal of his rings press into Liam’s skin when he circles a wrist and his lips curve up knowingly for a smile.

“Hey, man, it’s cool,” he insists with that haphazard drag to his voice that Liam loves when he’s sleepy and cold and cuddles in the small space Harry offers him inside of his bunk on the bus, “You don’t have to like, I don’t know, name this _thing_ yet, right?  It’s just – you two are just enjoying each other.”

Liam tilts his head back, exhales a heavy breath before nodding.  He can’t help the smirk that kisses his lips when he whispers, “Just chilling.”

“And loads of sexy time, right?”

Liam giggles, shoulders lifting instinctually before he bites down on his lip.  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Oi, get off it,” Harry teases, knocking their shoulders and pressing the tip of his boot to the arch of Liam’s Converse.  “We can hear you, you know.  You’re not exactly the _sex whisperer_ or anything, dude.”

Liam scrunches his nose, crinkles his eyes with a laugh and takes a long swallow of fizzy carbonation to try and wash away the slick saltiness under his tongue from blowing Zayn in the loo between wardrobe fittings mid-morning.

“It’s just,” Harry pauses, dragging fingers up the back of Liam’s neck, under the snapback for pieces of his hair, “You haven’t been proper happy, not like this, since Dani.  Not to bring her up or anything, mate, but – “

Liam nods, slow and even, watching Louis trip over an ollie while Zayn barks out a laugh in the haze of the sun.

“Cheers, mate,” Liam salutes, finishing off the drink and he tries to grip his smirk between his teeth when Harry offers him a clumsy, uncoordinated fist bump that turns into their fingers interlocking instead.

“The paps are gonna be all over this when they figure it out,” Harry whispers, still cherry lips riding the high of a smile.  He presses his chin to Liam’s shoulder and Liam rejects shrugging him away.

“Probably,” he sighs, dragging the back of his wrist over his mouth, stealing glances at Niall circling Zayn with keepie-uppies that fascinate the boy.

“Seventeen,” Harry whistles, low and symphonic.

Liam glares at him for a whole three seconds, that echo of _‘I’m seventeen now’_ filling all of the gaps Liam used to crowd with regrets and lost opportunities and everything he can’t quite fix – like his family and Danielle and _freedom_ , fuck, he almost forgot how that tasted until Zayn.

“Hey, bro, I’m not judging,” Harry laughs, pulling back, fingers scratching down to the nape of Liam’s neck.  They push at the skin, breaking all of the tension that Liam didn’t know he was holding and he mewls back into the touch.  “I know how it is for him.  It wasn’t that long ago I was seventeen and – “

“Wasn’t it like twenty seconds ago?” Liam interrupts teasingly.

“ _Two years_ ago, you dick,” Harry sneers, clawing a thumbnail just below the nape of Liam’s neck.  “I’m just saying – I know how easy it is to fall for someone at that age.”

“Yeah?”

Harry nods quickly, a half-cocked smirk showing off his dimple as he banks a stare out to the open space in front of them.  “C’mon dude, I was in love with Louis Tomlinson and then Caroline Flack and then Grimmy in less than a year.  I spent more time washing my sheets of tears rather than semen that year.  Seventeen and hormones are a right bitch.”

Liam snorts, ducks his head to shadow the blush at the memories of a sixteen year old Harry chasing Louis everywhere just for the manic grins and intimate fingers and cuddles in the dark they thought no one noticed.

It’s like a backbeat, the unnoticeable layer between treble and bass when he thinks about it.  It’s a change in the current.  The realization kicks back like an updraft and he smothers a laugh in his forearm to distract from the way his heart slows.  It’s a complete juxtaposition to the rate he imagines Zayn’s heart moves at when he smiles back at Liam with a clear sun and the heavens behind him.

Because, yes, it’s just that easy to fall.

No parachute, eyes closed, terminal velocity a soft blanket you can’t quite get comfortable in.

It’s the kind of thing only the best poets write about because you don’t fall in love by choice.  You fall in love through a lack of expectation and by chance, not experience.

“You think?” he half-gasps, thumbing at those four chevrons until he thinks maybe he’s not the last one.  “You think that might happen?”

Harry smears his cheek to Liam’s bicep, shrugs.  “Too soon to tell, right?  You haven’t even took the bloke on a proper date, Li, Christ.”

Liam chuckles softly, nods but he can’t seem to take his eyes away from Zayn.  Away from the way he fits into his life – a bit awkwardly with rough edges and unnatural shapes but he, unintentionally, keeps Liam’s heart suspended in his throat when he stares for too long and he –

He _likes_ that.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says with a laugh that feels so false but appropriate when he looks away from Zayn.  “We’re just fucking about, anyways.”

Harry pushes a frown over his lips and his tongue flutters with words on it but Louis jogs up, breathlessly, with wild eyes and sweat slicking his hair to his forehead.  He fits himself between Harry’s spread thighs, a spine to Harry’s chest and he ignores all of the shrieks and flashing cameras from too far away to capture a proper photo to smile up at Liam.

“Can we keep him?” he pants, pushing the fringe off his brow.

Liam quirks an eyebrow, winces at Louis’ manic smirk.  “He’s not a puppy, Lou, I don’t – “

Louis clucks his tongue, flicks Liam off before turning a little towards Harry.  “I promise we’ll feed him and I’ll walk him every morning, Haz, please.”

Harry barks out a laugh, tangles his fingers with Louis’ in his hair and nods.

“Anything you want, Lou.”

Louis sticks a tongue out at Liam and he considers punching both of them, the fucking idiots.  He kicks at Louis’ ankle in revenge, breathes out a steady laugh when Louis looks wounded and curls further into Harry’s long arms.

“He’s sick on the board, Li,” Louis comments, eyeing Zayn with squinted eyes from the high sun, grinning when Niall kicks about the ball and Zayn tries to keep up.  “Nice kid.”

“Kid,” Liam repeats, low, trying to recuperate his breathing because _I’m seventeen now_ keeps crawling up his throat and slices at his brain like an awful hangover.

Harry nudges him with an elbow, a raised eyebrow like a warning.

 _Just dicking around_ , he thinks but it doesn’t appease that raging itch up his arms and the sting down his legs.

Zayn’s rubbing at the nape of his neck with the football wobbly under one foot, lip caught in his teeth and nervous eyes scanning the area.  He looks out of place – a kid playing amongst men – and tips his chin down like that apprehensive beginning to all of this that Liam’s slowly trying to forget.

“I don’t,” he stammers, tugging the hem of his Wolverine shirt and rocking on one heel with a practiced balance, “I’m not all that good at sports, sorry.  I just – I don’t really know how to play footie.  Not proper-like, y’know?  Sorry, I’m shit at it.”

Niall’s jaw goes slack, eyes wide and blue like the Atlantic while Harry presses his smile into Louis’ hair.  Liam mirrors him with a hand on the back of his neck, teeth ruining his bottom lip while Louis nods, fixes a serious expression to his face.

“Well then,” Louis starts like he has a speech ready, like he’s seconds from damning Zayn for not knowing fuck about the one thing Louis lives and breathes for but something alternatively kind walks across his lips and his eyes shine like a blue moon before he says, calmly, “We must teach you then, right?  You are our mate and a righteous – “

“You’re so nostalgic,” Harry teases into his damp hair, giggling.

“ – kind of lad, okay?” Louis finishes, nudging a shoulder back at Harry to knock him out of place.  He shoots Zayn a large grin when the boy’s face softens into a smile, a little hint of pride and appreciation and he’s fucking _glowing_ for Louis –

And that itch turns into a rage, a fire that Liam won’t call jealousy.

He fucking _won’t_.

Louis clears his throat, dusts off his skinny jeans when he stands and offers Harry a hand to join him.  “I will not let you live your life like that,” Louis declares, loudly, the arc of his words carried off by a mid-spring breeze.  He throws a fist into the air, some proud warrior, before exclaiming, “You are one of us!”

Niall crows out his agreement, Harry feigning an applause and a bow and that warm, warm feeling circulating through Liam’s blood shocks his nervous system.  It drags the corners of his mouth up and all he wants to do is chase up the gravel, toss Zayn over one shoulder and kiss that dopey smile off of his lips.

No, he wants to smear it onto his own lips and desensitize his thoughts about _seventeen_ and _just a fuck, right?_ because, gradually, they feel like wasted letters thrown together.

They feel inaccurate, minimal details that don’t begin to quell this new feeling in his marrow.

 

|*|

 

It’s a week into the tour and Liam swears the world has been turning, turning, turn, turn anti-clockwise since their first show in Dublin and that non-stop adrenaline rush he correlates with sugary donuts and too much coffee and alcohol mixed with energy drinks keeps him buzzing for hours after every show.  He thinks parts of it is due to Niall’s constant wide-eyed look like he’s resetting from a night on ecstasy or Louis’ outrageous pranks before a show or Harry’s drunken smiles every time he manages to hit his notes on stage without that pubescent crack in his voice but, mostly, it’s the rush of ten thousand screaming fans knowing all of the words and filling in the ad-libs when Liam’s too weak to.

There’s small moments when it all stops, when he remembers to call home to check on his sisters and Loki or when he bothers to answer messages on Twitter or when he sits in that lull between sleep-deprivation and euphoric floating after a lie-in.

And there’s moments like this –

A long, dark road ahead of them with Louis having a kip in Harry’s bunk while dressed in Niall’s favorite footie jersey, Niall wailing through a collection of Aerosmith songs in the back, Harry raiding the fridge for six different flavors of ice cream and that peace that comes with stretches of highway and his cold bunk his comfort.

He’s got a foot kicked out, missing one sock, joggers low on his hips, the dim overhead light clicked on and the fuzzy glow of his phone shining off his cheeks, his helpless smile as he pulls up FaceTime.

“Hi,” he grins out before Zayn can speak, grinning at the black-rimmed glasses and thick fringe over his forehead.

“Hey,” Zayn smiles, dragging a lazy hand through his hair, knocking it away some until Liam lets out a whine of discontent, shyly fixing it back.

His skin is that ripe shade between gold and pink like it is just after a shower, his lips tinted like a strawberry, jaw freshly shaven and he looks so much younger, vulnerable like this.  His bare shoulders are pulled up, that anxiously nervous boy Liam remembers from the Chinese restaurant, from between his hotel sheets.  He’s chewing on his thumbnail like he’s trying to hold back the words, hiding a smile behind his knuckles.

“Are you naked there, babe?” Liam teases, his heart racing a little at the thought and his spare hand cups the outline of his slow rising erection at the memories –

Zayn spread across a neat hotel bed, pulling at the sheets, screwing down onto Liam’s slick fingers with a nipple caught between Liam’s teeth and an echo of his name saturating the walls two hours before Liam’s flight.

Zayn giggles apprehensively, shaking his head.  He drags the phone down over his tight still-developing chest, scrunched stomach muscles to his white jersey briefs and Liam swears he can see Zayn’s cock fattening up before the screen goes blurry as he yanks the phone back up to his face.

“Did you get, like, proper hard thinking about that, man?” Zayn asks quietly, like a secret he doesn’t want the world to hear.

Liam giggles, shakes his head but thumbs the head of his cock to anchor his hips down, to take some of the ache off.

“ _No wanking on the bus_ – it’s a rule,” Liam confesses, tipping his head back.

Zayn snorts, pushing his fringe back again.  “How many times have the lads broke it?”

“Every day,” Liam laughs, shoving half of the noise into his fist because Louis is sleep across from him and he knows if Harry hears, he’ll crawl into Liam’s bunk and steal his phone just to chat with Zayn –

Because they all ask about him, even Paddy, like he’s a missing link.  Like he’s some sort of mascot or like he’s one of them.

Like Zayn is _one of them_.

Zayn hums with his chin on his knuckles, soft lips quirked into a grin.  He pulls off his glasses, the poor lighting of his bedroom with the yellow walls, mahogany backboard, comic book action figures in the background, hides the mint green freckled through those brown eyes but Liam stares harder anyway.

“How’s Ireland?” Zayn asks, cocking his head again to admire Liam and he can’t remember the last time he blushed so easily but there’s this fond look in Zayn’s eyes that pins him to that uncomfortable bunk without enough space, enough oxygen to survive on.

“Brilliant,” Liam grins, scratching at his thicker scruff.  “Niall has been pissed off his arse every night.  Lou too.”

“Sick,” Zayn giggles into his hand, lowering his voice, “What else?”

Liam’s lips twitch into a smile, the gold rays from a nearby lamp catching the round of Zayn’s cheek.  He drags the heel of his palm over his cock, feels that effervescent lightness in his lungs.

“Hazza won a blowjob in an ale drinking contest.  Didn’t think he had it in him,” Liam snorts, cracks his head against the cramped space when Harry passes by with a smack to his ankle and a _‘fuck right I did’_ echoing down the small walkway before disappearing into the back.  “Scored a finger up his bum, too.  Think he liked when the girl did that.”

“Who wouldn’t,” Zayn snickers.  He rubs his nose to stifle the giggles, looks up through those long lashes until something chaotic breaks in Liam’s chest.  “Can I tell you summat?”

Liam lifts an eyebrow he’s certain Zayn can’t see with the shadows of the bunk, the angle of his phone resting on his chest.  He drags a lazy tongue over his lips, puckers a silly kiss for Zayn before smiling, “Vas happenin’ babe.”

Zayn scrunches his nose, pulls a quick face before turning shy, lowering his jaw with full lips brushing words into the palm of his hand.

“What’s that?”

“My parents,” Zayn sighs, fingering his fringe and toying with his glasses.  “They had some family business.  They’re out of town for the next two weeks and I, well, I might’ve looked up your itinerary – “

“Sneaky bastard,” Liam teases but there’s a lack of coordination between his heart and lungs at the thought – at how bad this boy _wants_ Liam, how much he probably thinks about Liam, how Liam just might be his.

 _Just his_.

Soft hairs fall in Zayn’s eyes, cheeks smeared in a pretty pink that’s meant to be far too effeminate for this boy but Zayn wears it like morning stubble, like too many hours in the sun with a strong jaw and a broad smile.

“What are you proposing, babe?” Liam wonders, cornering a marginal amount of confidence in his voice.

Zayn’s lips give him away, the twitch at the corners of his mouth, the wrinkle of his nose.

“I’m sat with my older sister Doniya who doesn’t want to be bothered because she’s working on an end of term art project.  I dunno, says it’s about the correlation between cultural diversity and finger-paints or summat,” Zayn huffs out, still barely holding Liam’s gaze.  His teeth reach for his bottom lip and Liam mumbles a noise of displeasure to stop him.  “I bribed her off for a few days away.  Told her I was meeting up with Ant and Danny and thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if I caught a show or two with you lads?”

It comes out in an endless breath, all the words strewn together but Liam thinks the only thing that matters is the soft light on Zayn’s face and the way he’s almost breathing normally.  He’s far more fascinated with that anxious smile on Zayn’s lips like he’s unsure, like maybe he said too much and, no, he hasn’t.

Liam thinks he’s said just enough.

“I’ll have a car and Paddy pick you up,” he says immediately, grinning at the stars crackling in Zayn’s eyes – a trick of the light, he swears – and he laughs at the way Zayn’s eyes crinkle just a little at the noises they share.

They breathe together when Liam curls up in his bunk, blinking heavy eyes at each other, singing their favorite parts of old songs to each other and the world separating feels like a couple of footsteps when he forgets what all of this is supposed to mean.

“Babe,” Zayn breathes, half between exhaustion and two-parts excited by the way Liam grins back, “Can I tell you something else?”

Liam doesn’t respond, too inclined to stroke a slow hand over his dick through his joggers, trying to imprint the sound of Zayn’s heavy, deep voice to memory for later fulfillment.

He nods so Zayn can see, angling the view so the weak lighting from outside and inside the bunk highlights the bruised lip his teeth have wrecked.

“Is it too,” Zayn swallows, darting his eyes away, dropping his voice into something gravelly and young, “is it too soon to say I think I miss you?”

The stars and seas.  It’s all he thinks of for the twelve seconds he’s quiet on the other end.  The stars and seas and how everyone seems to navigate between the two with the same rules, almost the same principles.  And how he’s always been _the sensible one, Daddy Direction_ , the least likely to – _everything_.

And he throws his third rule out the bus when he stammers out a breath.  Against all intent and purpose, he abandons that non-negotiable rule about never getting attached to things associated with lust.

Or a simple fuck.

His lips stutter into something tranquil with heavy, drooping eyes before whispers, “Yeah, it’s cool, babe.  You can say it.”

And when they’re quiet and Zayn’s almost asleep on the other end with this hypnotic smile, Liam whispers an _‘I think I miss you too boy wonder’_ that he swears can’t be heard by anything but his own uncontrollable heart.

 

|*|

 

He wakes up just before dawn the next morning with a dead phone, morning wood, and a grinning Louis yanking back the curtain divider.

And, later on, when he checks his messages, there’s only one from Zayn – _miss you too babe aha xx_ – that he blushes at and saves with a stupidly irremovable smile that lasts for the entire concert.

 

|*|

 

He remembers nights off during the first tour being a little different –

Four boys stacked to one bed in pajama bottoms with wrecked hair, a shared bag of red vines and a marathon of horror films with Harry’s screams muffled by the skin of Louis’ neck and Niall being wide-eyed for hours, laughing at all of the bloodiest scenes.  There was always a foreign city just outside of their hotel room with streaming lights and a wide-awake sky and at least fifty strangers that knew their names and were willing to suck their cocks for a photo.  Instead of claiming their territory and rifling their city for the excitement behind every corner, they snuggled up with smuggled bottles of trashy beer, play fighting between cheap sheets and whispering all of the best moments of the tour just before the dawn.

But _this_?  He’ll gladly take this –

There’s a fresh breath of city air dancing in from the open hotel window, cooling all of the corners and dips in the architecture that the low-set lights refuse to reach.  He can see the skyline through the swaying curtains and it’s that rare symphony of raspberry, ripe lavenders, scratches and swirls of an almost black-blue and the stars are finding their places on the giant stage of Manchester atmosphere, the clouds making low-hanging guest appearances.  There’s a calm May heat circling all of the sweetest spots of the room and they’ve been trading kisses between butterscotch candies and quiet laughter.

Zayn’s fingers smell of Marlboro’s and autumn cider, orbiting Liam’s face and skimming over his stubble.  He’s twisted into Liam’s lap, the sheets a quiet edge of the tide at Liam’s feet, his veins hot every time he drags fingers over Zayn’s bare skin.  They’re playing that bass-heavy music they love with the kind of lyrics that distract from the places their lips touch, the surfaces their hands collide upon.

He’s been catching the draft under his palm, the one he has pressed to the nape of Zayn’s neck to hold him in a kiss, to taste the width of his smile and the sugar on his tongue.  He can trace out every one of Zayn’s shivers when his spare fingers circle his hole, grinning at how speechless the subtly makes this boy.

His tongue licks at a swollen lip – not from just the kisses, but the way Zayn’s teeth bruised it an hour ago when he crawled into Liam’s lap with a shy smirk and cheap drug store lube in his palm and a breathy _‘I dunno how to – I don’t know the right way to say this but I was thinking’_ and the rest of the words didn’t really matter – and Zayn’s kisses grow raw after the second finger, desperate when Liam manages a third one.

There’s something about the way Zayn has been stammering around this subject for a week, for hours after the car brought him from the airport.  The cheesy hints he drops after dinner, before they cuddle up for another Batman film.  The uneasy smile he gives Liam between blowjobs and restless hands and, just before he falls asleep in the crook of Liam’s neck, the whispered _‘I think about you inside of me a lot and, like, I’d be massively happy if you’d, y’know, make that happen’_ when neither of them can fight the sleep anymore.

Lips brush a poignant hush to Zayn’s skin when his muscles go taut, teeth chasing the tremble across his throat and he grins under Zayn’s jaw, whispering, “We don’t have to do this, babe, I swear.  I’m good.”

Zayn nods, shivers, but doesn’t pull off.  No, he clenches around three fingers and shoves down and gasps half a shaky note into Liam’s mouth.

He can tell this isn’t Zayn’s first time – with fingers, nothing else – by the smooth take and the gentle rock of his hips when he fucks himself onto them.  He bites a laugh into Liam’s shoulder when Liam drags his thumb around the wet rim, wiggles his fingers and – _right there_.

Zayn’s head jerks back involuntarily and Liam smirks, sucks a dim mark into his skin, nips at his Adam’s apple until Zayn can adjust, until his heartbeat is a little less irregular.  He knows Zayn’s cock isn’t meant to be a diversion but it keeps throbbing against his stomach and slicking it and the head is a deathly dark shade from the _need_ in Zayn’s bones but neither of them touches it.  Not when Zayn’s so close and incredibly stretched and he’s toeing the edge –

He’s all heavy breaths and eyes blown a spidery black and fingers twisting encouragingly into Liam’s muscles until he keeps a finger pressed to Zayn’s prostate to watch him almost unravel just like this.

Liam sneaks kisses to the corner of Zayn’s mouth, quiet words and lyrics like _these lips can’t wait to taste your skin_ while his fingers trace the tight walls on the inside of Zayn.  There’s filthy groans escaping Zayn’s lips, buried in thick hair because Zayn’s a little wary about getting loud but Liam – fuck, _he wants Zayn loud_.  He wants him unashamed.

He wants a broken language on this boy’s tongue with a body falling apart between his fingers so he can kiss it back together under a heavy moon.

“Oh babe,” Liam moans, pulling his fingers free to work two back in, a sloppy, wet sound echoing between their breaths.

“ _Leeyum_ ,” Zayn whines, eyes shut but swollen pink lips remain open, “Don’t – don’t call me that.”

Liam smirks, licking around fresh ink and twisting fingers up with a silent _just let my love adorn you_ before he mumbles, “Oh boy wonder.”

A breathy laugh escapes Zayn’s lips, proceeds an achy moan when Liam thumbs the head of his cock to draw out the bubbling precome and he follows the momentum of Zayn’s quaking muscles with his lips.

“How do you want to – “

Zayn keens in this deep voice that threatens to unleash something carnal inside of Liam.

“I don’t know – I mean,” Zayn stutters, staring down at Liam through long eyelashes, “I looked up a couple of different positions but – “

Liam can’t swallow back his giggle, hides his face in Zayn’s skin to avoid the harsh streak of blush across Zayn’s cheeks, the way his bottom lip slips into a frown.

“Don’t laugh at me, you dick,” Zayn huffs, an uneven snicker chasing his words.

“M’sorry,” Liam chuckles, bruising Zayn’s skin with his teeth, with his lips.  “Like this.”

He frees a hand to explain, curling fingers around Zayn’s waist and dragging him further into his lap until the head of his cock strokes up the line of Zayn’s arse and the reaction is brilliant.  His fingers slide out and he secures strong hands to Zayn’s waist to settle the whimper in the back of Zayn’s throat, teasing his cock between the cheeks, almost catching on the stretched hole.

Zayn goes a little compliant, a little nervously into Liam’s grip.  He bites into his bottom lip, altering the color with the pressure, and Liam can’t look away when he spills more lube over his cock, slicks it up Zayn’s hole.  He stares into those wide, wide eyes that should be anxious or contemplative or fearful but they’re –

 _Wow_.

They’re willing and trusting and Liam runs out of words after that.

There’s a hitch in both of their hips, over their lips when Liam slides the head in.  He licks at his dry lips, whispers _‘let my love adorn you’_ in time with the music and Zayn scatters fingers into Liam’s hair for an anchor.  There’s an overwhelming wash to Zayn’s face, trembled breaths like he’s trying to remember the purpose of oxygen and Liam doesn’t rock up into him like he wants to.  He goes maddeningly slow, waits for every muscle to stop constricting, thinks of those stupid exercise routines he does every morning for conditioning and thanks Mark for the weeks of _hell_ when he trains all of his reflexes to _wait, just wait for him_.

Liam cools fingers to the inside of Zayn’s thigh, a loose grip just to test the waters, and Zayn tries to slide down a little further but struggles.  It comes out in a soft wail that Zayn quickly swallows like he’s embarrassed, like he’s a failure.

He kisses up Zayn’s jaw and grins to the line of his mouth and _‘always adore you’_ rushes over his tongue as he steadies Zayn halfway on his cock.

“Take your time,” Liam says gently, holding Zayn’s gaze.

Zayn furrows a brow, frustrated, shakes his head.

“Zayn,” he warns in this tranquil voice that shifts something pretty up Zayn’s muscles, “take your time.”

Zayn breathes a laugh, tilting his head a little so their noses brush, so he can expose the tendons in his neck and find a grip on Liam’s shoulder to sink lower.

“Stop being nice,” Zayn groans, the pain in his face artfully hidden by the shadows, “And don’t patronize me.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Liam smiles, sneaking sticky fingers up Zayn’s spine, counting off the knobs until he’s buried deep in Zayn.

Zayn stops to adjust with a wrinkled nose and pinched eyes and scratching fingers and Liam remembers that from his first time –

And the tears and the _‘no, please, stop’_ when the impatient boy over him got too anxious and the breathy sighs that followed, the ache between his muscles drown in a pillow.

He looks up at Zayn, the tight set of his jaw, the subtle giveaways like he’s almost ready.

 _Just a little encouragement_ , he thinks with his lip over Zayn’s collarbone, a thumb stroking up his bare hip.

“You’re too nice to me and – “

Liam groans, rocks up carefully, catches Zayn’s offbeat moan with his fingers tracing his bottom lip.

“Ride me, Zayn,” he says in this husky, smoky voice that snaps Zayn’s eyes open.  He stares back, hips still swaying, muscles curling around Zayn’s spine to center him.  “C’mon, babe, _ride me_.”

Zayn bites the edge of his lip, tentatively lifts up before swiveling down and their shared exhale thuds louder than the dim music.  He watches the vulnerable part of Zayn’s lips, the way wonder blooms across his face and he nods back, contracts all of his muscles to help Zayn slide up this time and they fall together in a rhythm that’s steady and slow and overwhelming.

He cups the nape of Zayn’s neck to kiss him, loosens his arm to let Zayn have control.  He lets him grind down at his own pace, fucks up to counter Zayn’s restrained moans.  He settles a palm to the small of Zayn’s back, pushes him back on his cock, grins at the euphoria that slips across Zayn’s expression.

“You feel _that_?” he teases on an upward thrust, almost knocking Zayn out of place.

Zayn whimpers, nods, grinds back harder.  His gasps echo with Liam’s pants and their fingers twist somewhere on the sheets for better positioning.

“You feel it, right babe?” Liam groans, holding Zayn’s hips still and he’s never been a fan of the jackhammer method but it sparks over Zayn’s prostate in the most amazing manner that they both lose their breath.

Liam bites a bruise into his own lip, feels Zayn’s thighs squeeze around him when he regains composure.

“Feel how hard I am?” Liam says into Zayn’s neck, changes the angle and _there, yes, there_.

They’re in a _no fly zone_ , a transit orbit, a galaxy without gravity when Liam slides deeper, deeper.

Zayn groans encouragingly, pressed his sweaty forehead to Liam’s and goes pliant for Liam’s thrusts.  He looks almost broken but happily shattered.  He’s scratching new marks into Liam’s skin with dull nails and mouthing out inaudible words and crooning something deliciously memorable when Liam whispers, “I’m so fucking hard for you, babe.  You should see this.”

The slick smack of their flesh, the wet sounds of his cock working Zayn looser, the low decibel of their voices like they’re on the verge of saying something completely affectionate and meaningful distracts Liam from the way Zayn’s got a hand between them now, a thumb pressed to the hard line of his cock and fingers trying to calm everything in between.

His smaller, drawn-tight body fits perfectly against Liam’s thighs, still-developing muscles welcoming each of Liam’s practiced thrusts.  All of his strength, under that tenderly young flesh, shows with the way he occasionally rocks back.  His loose fingers around his cock drag a little softer than the collision of their bodies and Liam breathes hot words of reassurance over Zayn’s neck until his inexperience shows under the gold glow of a nearby lamp.

Everything tense under Zayn’s bones goes soft, relaxed when Liam smiles up at him and licks the shame off of his lips and Zayn comes messily between his fingers.  He streaks Liam’s chest and finally, finally whimpers in that sticky falsetto that echoes off the walls –

And Liam’s certain he’s never seen a sight like this in all of those dumb history books from school or across all of the foreign cities they’ve visited.

“So fucking incredible,” he breathes and Zayn laughs while still coming, while still soaking their already saturated skin with his muscles squeezing tightly around Liam.

He pulls Zayn up and off in this gentle fashion and he can’t work a hand around them fast enough before he’s coming, squeezing thick drops out and across the back of Zayn’s thighs, his still quivering hole.  He seizes up, winces, bites a moan into Zayn’s skin at the release and he swears he’s daydreaming when he feels Zayn’s hands petting his face, pulling him away from the blackened edges with this husky voice that’s years older than Liam remembers.

Afterwards, when their skin is pink from the scalding water pressure rather than the blush and they’re drowsy and just on the edge of talking softly because it’s two in the morning, Liam lays spread on his stomach over the sheets while Zayn uses one hand to sketch over hotel brochures and swipe through his phone with his spare one.  He takes to dragging idle fingers up Zayn’s bare spine, grinning at all the goosebumps that chase his path and the little giggles that keep shifting the muscles he hasn’t pressed against yet.

Zayn smiles over his shoulder, fringe flat and in his eyes, cheeks round but he’s beginning to shed the extra weight, his youth falling away like a butterfly’s cocoon.  His eyes are a rusty brown, stars and dusty gold splintered around his irises.  He sucks on his bottom lip like a toddler and drags the broad side of his Sharpie over the inside of Liam’s wrist – dedicating spare stretches of skin to his own artwork.

“I don’t know if this is okay,” Zayn starts like he always does when he’s too nervous, too excited, too _everything_ in Liam’s presence.

Liam quirks an eyebrow, cuddles a little closer to watch the cause and effect of his stubble over Zayn’s naked shoulder.

“I mentioned you to my sister, Doniya, the one I told you about?”

Liam nods slowly, dry lips smearing kisses over the shiny bits of skin the fading light caresses.

“I mean,” Zayn heaves in a deep breath, the kind you take before a headfirst collision with the water, “I sort of told her about us, right?  Well, not _us_ because we’re not – “

There’s a pause like he wants Liam to correct him, like he’s waited for Liam to give them a title, something official.

He breathes warm breath over the warm skin near Zayn’s neck instead.

He’s not ready – _not yet_.

Zayn ducks his head, smiling.  “I just sort of told her I might be seeing someone.  And that someone might be _Liam Payne_ and she called me a fucking wanker and laughed.  I sort of, like, I don’t know, I just left it alone.”

“Did you want her to believe you?” Liam asks and he doesn’t know why.

He’s trying so hard to engross himself in the vulnerable skin on display, the way the sheets twist around Zayn’s hips and hide the paler skin around his arse, pooled around his thighs so Liam can tiptoe fingers over the soft hairs there.  He doesn’t want to filter through the weak tone of Zayn’s voice or the almost-frown on his lips or the hope in his words.

“Maybe,” Zayn shrugs, reverting to that seventeen year old from a Chinese takeaway restaurant and Liam hears the put upon laugh, grimaces with it.  “No, I didn’t.  Didn’t mean anything.”

Liam bites at Zayn’s shoulder, a sharp crease that draws a yelp and he scowls back at Zayn.

“Liar.”

Zayn scoffs, rolls away a little but keeps doodling silly figures and symbols over Liam’s skin.

“It’s stupid, anyway.  What real bloke gets caught up with some _kid_ and – “

Liam sighs, buries his breath to Zayn’s neck and sucks a lazy mark to the tendons that unsettles the tip of the marker over his arm.  He grins under Zayn’s jaw, snatches away his phone with a sneer and rolls to his back, drags Zayn with him.

Thick hair gets caught in his mouth and Zayn recovers in time to add a few more drawings to Liam’s bare flesh, over his chest, tickling the tip over Liam’s neck.

“Wanna give her some proof?” he offers, feeling foolish and daft and completely out of his element but the fucking _grin_ Zayn shoots him, the sparkly eyes and hesitant nod is enough.

It’s the clarity in a sandstorm.

Liam smirks back, waits until Zayn cuddles a little closer and they grin goofily at the lens before Liam snaps off a few pictures on Zayn’s phone.  They laugh together, pulling stupid faces that are forgettable and he turns just a little to see the crinkles around Zayn’s eyes and the pink of his lips and the nearly too-cool look Zayn gives the camera before the flash catches them again.

“One more,” Liam requests, begs, really because he doesn’t want Zayn too far.

Zayn nods, shyly, pulls in and Liam soothes his lips to Zayn’s cheek for one of those daft couple-like pictures that he’s seen in a dozen different mate’s phones and he’s always, always hated them.  They’re cheesy and Twitter-ready and, if this were anyone else, Liam would crawl out of the bed for a smoke and a couple of swallows of Jack to dull the annoyance.

But not with Zayn.

He lets Zayn queue up Doniya’s number and, with their fingers bumping, they pick out all of the best pictures and Liam taps out a quick – _me and boy wonder! ur little bro is fantastic!! Real gangsta this one… hope to meet u soon x payno_ – that he can’t quite read back but Zayn smirks into his cheek, breathes a contagious giggle that swallows all of the oxygen surrounding Liam’s heart.

There’s a wait for his heart to move in slow motion again before Zayn’s inking more silly characters over his skin and he presses into the mattress to let Zayn snap off a few pictures for his Twitter and he tugs Zayn down for a slow kiss that ends in a smile and they abandon their usual routine for something a little different –

Liam falling asleep with Zayn’s wiry arms curled around him and his face burrowed into Zayn’s neck and their legs tangled and it’s the safest he’s been since before that big, big stage and losing his identity for _One Direction_.

 

|*|

 

They’re between cities and piss breaks at petrol stations and the bus is just at the height of that lull, that come down hours after a show.  Everything under his skin is still like a live wire from the adrenaline and Zayn _won’t stop_ touching him in the shadows of his tiny bunk.

He’s traded off bunks with Harry because Zayn’s fearful of the height and the boys lack manners when it comes to _community space_ so he’s a little terrified of Zayn waking in the middle of the night to Niall’s midnight wank-fest to cheesy porn or Harry sneaking another drunken bird on the bus for mutually sloppy oral sex.  They’ve stolen Louis’ afghan to slow the chill from open highway air and there’s a loose laugh in his ear every time Zayn sneaks a few fingers beneath the waistband but, somehow, all of this calms the bonfire of electrons in his blood, the energy he can’t quite shake from another great show.  He sinks into it and curls an arm under Zayn’s spine to drag him closer while fisting fingers into his relaxed quiff to compose Zayn’s breathy moans.

They swap the kind of messy kisses he remembers from secondary school – all tongue and teeth and bumping noses.  He savors the flavor of Zayn’s minty gum, the combination of sugary root beer and sharp nicotine and rocks his hips up when Zayn undoes his flies, shrugs his jeans down a little.

“Can I – “

Liam whines into his mouth, almost regrets the sound when Louis’ snores go quiet but then he starts up again and Liam traces the smirk on Zayn’s mouth with his tongue.

“It’s just that,” Zayn explains when Liam finally hitches his hips, uses a free hand to help Zayn drag his jeans to his thigh and he remembers, belatedly, there wasn’t much time between the encore and the post-show antics for a proper shower or fresh pants when Zayn’s fingers stroke over his bare hip.

He grins up at the stupid ceiling, feeling dizzy and Zayn coos into his cheeks when he scrapes his dull nails over Liam’s curly hairs rather than another barrier of cotton.

“Sorry,” he huffs, tugging his fingers through Zayn’s hair.

“S’cool,” Zayn says nonchalantly but the layer underneath his voice shows off his fascination and his stammering excitement.  “But like, I dunno.  I just want to touch, y’know?”

Liam hums his approval, unconsciously thrusting into Zayn’s loose fingers when they circle the shaft.

“I’ve just never,” Zayn swallows and holds his breath.  Liam’s only half-hard and Zayn thumbs at the extra skin and –

 _Oh_.

Zayn shakes his head, the darkness cloaking the blush Liam knows is there, probably spreading from his cheeks down his neck and across the highest point of his chest.

“I’ve never, like, never been with a lad like this,” Zayn mumbles, sliding the skin back and forth until Liam can _hear_ himself get harder.  “I mean with _this_ , y’know?”

“Uncircumcised,” Liam breathes in this steady noise to hide the moan.  “There’s a proper name.”

Zayn bites his shoulder through his shirt, giggles into his neck with the cold tip of his nose shocking a sweet static flow up Liam’s spine.

“I know, you idiot,” Zayn finally says, fingers still moving casually, with little confidence.  “It’s just – “

His fingers catch around the head when the skin draws back and Liam’s fingers clutch at the stupid Batman bed sheets his mum bought him for the bus, eyes squeezing shut and muscles twisting to harbor the groan in his throat.

“It’s different,” Zayn mumbles, nosing under Liam’s jaw.

“In a bad way?”

Zayn snorts, licks at an earlier wound on Liam’s neck that won’t heal for a few days and the make-up department will no doubt be furious but –

“I sort of like it, right,” Zayn whispers, rutting his own erection to Liam’s thigh and if the space was a little wider and he was just a tiny bit more flexible, he’d wank this boy into a sweaty mess to admire under the sting of the bunk’s fuzzy overhead light.

“It’s just a dick, innit?” Liam half-shrugs, does his best to play coy even with Zayn’s fingers exploring the tip and stroking at the extra skin until it folds back tight like latex.

“It’s always so,” Zayn inhales quickly when Liam twists his hips, a thick spurt of precome bubbling out the slit.  He grins against Liam’s shoulder, breathes, “ _wet_ , like.  It’s always so wet, babe.  Kind of like a – “

Liam groans this time, full and long and mouths over Zayn’s temple to control a need to fuck Zayn into a speechless state.

“I’m sure there’s some sort of scientific study or summat on it.  Something about uncut lads being,” he chokes on a word, a syllable, fuck probably a _letter_ when Zayn’s long, artistic fingers work the skin back and forth, “We just have extra come, maybe.”

Zayn strangles a laugh to Liam’s shoulder but speeds up the pace of his hand.  “That’s daft, man.”

“Well, fuck,” Liam grunts, tugging on Zayn’s hair to find a spare strip of neck to bruise.  “I was never good with biology – “

“Anatomy,” Zayn corrects in this calm voice while his hand squeezes around Liam, fingers slick with precome.

“Fuck off.”

Zayn teases him in slow strokes, smacking the tip against the hard planes of his stomach.  Liam wiggles his toes underneath the thick duvet, against Zayn’s bare ankle with his fist caught in Zayn’s hair, stretching the sheets beneath them.  They create this rhythm of slow pants and uneasy breaths and he swears Zayn is getting off on this as much as he is, knocking his hips to Liam’s waist and slicking his skin with messy kisses.

He’s too caught on his high from the show and the way Zayn twists his fingers, peels the skin back and slides it up to spill out more precome.  His fingers scramble in Zayn’s hair, too scared to keep him close but too desperate to tug him too far away.  He _can’t_ look at Zayn –

He knows he’ll be a wreck and the darkness will hide his best features and he’ll look nothing like a seventeen year old monster ruining Liam hour by hour but –

His eyes flutter open, eyelashes sticking to the tears he’s holding in from trying to restrain himself, and Zayn’s pink lips are parted, heavy pants, eyes dark like icy roads in the winter and Liam feels something heavy on his tongue, words he’s not ready to say aloud –

Or in his head.

Not those three words.

“Damn boy wonder,” he says, instead, and it sounds immature and dumb but he ignores the ridiculous laugh that spills from Zayn’s lips when his hips hitch up and he comes furiously over his clenched stomach muscles.

He corners the highest pitch of his moan into Zayn’s ear, fists a shaky hand between them and recklessly strokes Zayn through the borrowed pair of Liam’s basketball shorts until they’re soaked and sticky.

Liam pushes a happy smile to Zayn’s jaw, tightens both arms around his trembling body and waits out the last of Zayn’s orgasm until he’s malleable again.  He tastes the salty sweat along Zayn’s hairline while Zayn rubs curious fingers through the come smeared to his stomach –

And he won’t tell anyone, not even the boys, how Zayn happily sucks the thick liquid from his fingertips or how Liam presses him deep into the mattress to taste the flavor of himself on Zayn’s tongue but he refuses to omit that narcotic grin on Zayn’s lips just before Liam whispers a _‘you’re starting to feel a lot like a reason to come home’_ to Zayn’s mouth.

He doesn’t bother explaining his words and Zayn never asks, just breathes something pleased to Liam’s bare chest while the smooth highway drags beneath them.

 

|*|

 

When they stumble into the back of the bus, five past four in the morning, they’re not expecting to find the room tinted a neon blue by the television and three wide-eyed boys staring shamelessly at them.  Harry smirks first and makes room for them on the couch while Niall cracks open two spare Cokes and Louis buries his cold, bare feet underneath Zayn’s thighs.

“I hope _boy wonder_ washed his hands afterwards,” Louis remarks, still staring at the television while blindly passing over the bowl of kettle corn and Liam snatches it away while Zayn hides shamefully bright cheeks in an extra pillow.

“You’re losing your touch Payno,” Harry adds, shoving curls out of his eyes with his creamy skin almost turquoise in the dark, “You used to last twenty minutes longer and nut off a lot quieter.”

“Bullocks,” Niall laughs from his pile of comforters on the floor, wedged between Harry’s knees.  “That lad was always a bloody screamer.  Remember that one bird during the X-Factor tour – “

“Just before Dani,” Harry sings and Liam stares at Zayn for thirty seconds, waiting on a reaction but Zayn tucks his lip neatly between his teeth and tangles his fingers with Louis’ instead.

“She got ‘im loud, alright,” Louis chants, groaning obscenely and his poor imitation reminds Liam of that shitty porn they would watch between matinee shows and sound checks on the last tour.  “First time you got your balls sucked, right Leeymo?  Quite proud of that, this one was.”

Liam moans into Zayn’s pillow, kisses an _‘I’m sorry’_ to his shoulder and Zayn shakes with laughter instead of brooding in jealousy like he expects.

“What are we watching?” Zayn asks instead, stuffing his mouth with sweet corn and letting Liam lick away the sugary remains – there’s still a bitter-saltiness around his knuckles and Liam doesn’t grin at the filthy smirk Zayn shoots him between scenes.

“ _The Breakfast Club_ , a classic,” Harry responds first, twisting long fingers in Niall’s hair.

“Never seen it,” Zayn admits after sips of fizzy Coke and the _glare_ he gets from three pairs of eyes shocks him quiet.

“I reckon you’ve also never had your balls licked either,” Louis sighs.

“Actually, _Leeyum_ – “

Liam gasps and Niall howls a laugh that probably wakes half of the bus while Harry reaches across all of them to pat Liam’s forearm in a sympathetic manner.

“Right, well this one is definitely borrowing Harry’s sick collection of films when we take him back home,” Louis announces and Niall grunts his agreement.  Harry raises an approving eyebrow and Zayn glances around nervously until they all laugh at him.

Liam smiles at each of them, even Zayn, and they all cuddle around for the dance scene, Harry doing half of the choreography from his spot on the couch while Louis whispers _‘that’s when strange sensations start to grow’_ into the night.

 

|*|

 

During the sunrise, when he’s still awake and Louis passed out across Zayn’s lap while Zayn drools over Liam’s shoulder, he can’t admit that Zayn really is beginning to feel like a home.

Not when this kid is seventeen and unaware of the repercussions of love and adulthood.  Not when he’s twenty-one and the papers will swallow the story of how a boyband geek fell for a pre-university lad after spending the better part of two years chasing a heartbreaking girl.

Not when _this thing_ they have isn’t really a relationship and, it’s great sex, honestly, but a shag is just that.  It’s not a _forever after_.

And Zayn is just seventeen.

 

|*|

 

“I still can’t get into any of your stuff.”

Liam grins from the foot of another hotel bed, the sheets rumpled at Zayn’s bare feet with a pair of baggy joggers absorbing his ankles.  He’s sipping at morning tea with Liam’s oversized black hoodie swallowing him alive and thick hair fallen from early sunrise rain.  There’s a sweet heat to his cheeks from the steam and Liam hasn’t been able to stop staring at this boy since he crawled from the headboard to meet Liam for warm toast and lazy kisses that spoke _good morning_ and _come back to bed_ with just his teeth.

Zayn shrugs under Liam’s affectionate gaze, gnawing at his lip.  “I tried following it, but I can’t.  Just not, like, it’s not my style or whatever?  Me sisters love it, even Doniya.  She won’t admit it.”

“She seems nice,” Liam hums, smiling down at the acoustic guitar he stole from the band’s set.  He’s been trying to tune it but he’s not certain how to and settles for pulling at the strings until he finds a sound he likes.

“I think you’d like her,” Zayn mumbles around the lip of the cup.  “She sort of wants to meet you.”

Liam hums again, a soft noise of approval even though, underneath, he thinks it’s a manic idea.  It scares him and unearths tremors in his stomach and he can’t quite get the idea around his head –

This boy, their time together, this nameless feeling that could all end if he’s not careful.  It feels like egg shells and broken glass and pits of fire and he’s always been a bit clumsy.

“I didn’t like our early stuff either,” he admits to curve the subject, looking up through his eyelashes.  There’s a crooked grin on his lips that Zayn mirrors.  “We were shit back then.  Absolute trash.  But we’re mostly writing our own stuff now, sorting out what works best.  Me and Louis are really trying to find our sound, y’know?  Sounds crazy – “

“Sounds great,” Zayn interjects, freeing his smile from behind the cup between his hands.

Liam wants to reach out and fix his hair, scrubs his knuckles over Zayn’s unshaven jaw, bury a hand under the collar of the hoodie to touch Zayn’s warm skin.

He plucks out a few familiar chords just to focus, ducks his head and sucks on his lip.

“Niall’s been teaching me,” he breathes, finding something he remembers from years ago in those tight strings.

“Nice to know he’s good at summat besides fucking off into his hand, innit?” Zayn teases with a wide grin, sinfully pink lips still blowjob beautiful.

Liam sighs, lowers his eyes again and his voice carves out _‘today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you’_ between the silence and the muted television in the background.  He sniffs at the wet air from the open window, the lingering cigarette smoke from the three he huffed through while Zayn was sleep and watches the sun dash kaleidoscope bands of light across the soaked streets.

He buries his throat in a collision of _‘and after all, you’re my wonderwall’_ and, absently, looks up at Zayn to see the way his chest expands at the sound of Liam’s voice.  It quirks a grin to his lips and he shakes his head to dust away the sensations Zayn creates beneath his exterior.

“It’s been nice,” Liam mumbles, bruising his lip between chords.  “Not being alone on the road for awhile, y’know?  Like, I always have the lads, but it’s – well, it’s nice.”

“Yeah?”

Liam nods, holds onto the spare words that echo in his throat because they’re too wide, too wondrous, too fond.  He’s not attached.

Not to this boy, this shag, this – absolutely terrifying experience.

He switches tempos, catches a corner of his mouth when Zayn smirks over his cup.  They share a long stare that reminds Liam of summer – blossoming colors and gorgeous flowers and green, green grass and the kind of heat you want to ache all over.  He clips a laugh, tilts his head back and drowns half of his breaths with a _‘only miss a sun when it starts to snow, only know you love her when you let her go’_ into the space dividing them.

It’s cacophonic, another word from Harry’s silly crossword puzzles and the kind of thing he remembers because it’s supposed to be frightful.  It’s supposed to indent something disorderly in this system.

He waits a breath between strums, eases a smile to his lips when Zayn watches him intently and aches out an _‘only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low, only hate the road when you’re missing home’_ that he almost misses a note on.  In the undercurrent, beneath his hoarse morning voice, Zayn harmonizes in this brilliant way that makes Liam think this boy could’ve done it.  He could’ve won the whole competition, all alone, and Liam would’ve cheered from the road.

He would’ve wished he was right there.

“Only got you for two more days,” Liam mentions after an _‘and you let her go.’_ He blinks away when a frown slides over Zayn’s lips, clearing his throat.  “One more show and then – “

He ticks the words off his tongue and tucks them behind his teeth, thumbing over the wrong chords before he transitions.  He settles a smirk over his mouth, thinks of his sisters and his parents and the side streets of Wolverhampton and wonders if Zayn has those things too – little reminders that this big world has so many small treasures.

Zayn crawls a little closer, leaving the cold tea behind on the night table, sings softly _‘when people keep repeating that you’ll never fall in love’_ in time with Liam’s fingers.  Liam looks up, smiles helplessly, finds a sliver of comfort in those large eyes just before the _‘let my love open the door’_ sheds across his lips.

They grin like children, sway to the music and Zayn slides a stealthy hand between Liam’s thighs with a distracting falsetto voice.

“Can I suck you off?”

Liam laughs, strums through another song, a quick _‘going nowhere fast, we’ve reached the climax’_ that Zayn loses it over.  He leans over the guitar to settle a kiss to Zayn’s lips before pulling back.

“I’d let you fuck me if you asked, babe,” he says over the slide of his fingers and the admission comes so easily.  It floats off his tongue and, not even briefly, he doesn’t want to take it back.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Liam breathes, wiggling his eyebrows.  And he means it.  Honestly, he does.

“You sort of mean that much to me,” he adds in this voice that he can’t connect with because it’s foreign, unstable and insatiable all at once.  He smiles as a deflection, glances up to the ceiling.  “That’s a bit manic, right?”

“No, it’s kind of – “

Zayn glides his fingers further up, under the hem of Liam’s boxers, to the softest point of his thigh.  There’s an uncoordinated blush running from his chest up to his cheeks and a dizzying look in his eyes before he says, “I’d like that, someday.  But sucking you off, that’s a start, yeah?  I’d like that too.”

Liam strangles a laugh, nods.  He shoves the guitar away and knocks Zayn on his spine to straddle his chest, his already fattening up cock stretching through the front flap of cottony boxers.  There’s tension in his forearms and a twitch at the corner of his mouth.  Zayn’s husky _‘I sorted out I like watching you squirm’_ swims in his head and he sighs happily when Zayn loosens his jaw to let Liam fuck into his mouth like all of this is no longer something new to them.

 

|*|

 

The sheets are still sleep-warm around his waist and the cloudless sky over Sheffield lets in glittery scopes of light over their bare shoulders.  Soft fingers stick to his stubble, smiles smeared to his birthmark, and the iPod deck is on low, filling his hotel room with the kind of quiet noises he appreciates just after dawn.  His hands carve out all of the dips and contours in Zayn’s spine between indulgent breaths.  There’s loud, loud traffic just outside his window, a little gentler than the chants of the crowd outside a fortnight ago and Zayn tangles their legs together when he can’t mute his laughter against Liam’s shoulder.

He thinks of _‘in this California king bed we’re ten thousand miles apart’_ because he knows that early morning call for the cab and Zayn’s ride back to London is nearing.  His half-lidded eyes focus on all the meters of skin stitched with ink as a diversion, the places his lips have bruised.  He grins into the hollow of Zayn’s neck with his stubble tickling the tip of Liam’s nose.  Just hot breaths, hands twisting underneath the sheets, bodies shifting into a compliant state he’ll hold onto for the seconds and minutes he has right here.

There’s a vulnerable line to Zayn’s neck he drags his tongue over when he rolls on top of him.  A strong hand pins Zayn’s hips to the mattress, fingers breezing over naked skin.  He thinks of adding a matching mark just near the ink on Zayn’s sternum but presses down hard instead, lets Zayn feel the length of his erection with a lazy, sleepy smile.

“The papers always call Harry the beautiful one,” Zayn grins, messy head shoved into the pillows with an arched spine and rocking hips, “but they’re all wrong, man.  They’re sort of fucking idiots because you’re – “

Liam kisses the rest away.  He giggles and feels lightheaded, free falling.  He feels like an idiot for thinking it was John Mayer all along and for thinking he could be casual with this boy and for not kicking back at his heart when this assault on his mind started after that first night.

The world ebbs, gentles like the tide, like rough waters when he finds the lube between the fluffy duvet.  Zayn grins and he returns the look after drizzling his fingers wet.  The skin just above Zayn’s collarbone still tastes like autumn – scarlet leaves and dewy grass and hints of toffee candies – and his fingers slide in so easily from the night before –

Breathless, canting his hips up while Zayn slid down and their eyes shut in the dark because they already know all of the places their hands will roam; like clockwork.

Zayn spread his legs in the tangle of sheets and Liam smirks over his cheek when his breath hitches, when Liam finds his prostate.  They kiss away raw noises, throats still not accustom to the early hour, and he uses auxiliary fingers to brush the fringe out of Zayn’s eyes.

“You gonna fuck me, babe?” Zayn asks in this teasing voices that borders on cocky, a little too confident.

A little too much like a Zayn he’s falling in –

 _Wait, stop, red light_.

He smiles down at Zayn, nips at his chin, drags his tongue to those parted lips and presses up into quivering muscles with his fingers.

“Thought about it,” he replies just as casually, watching Zayn gradually fall apart on these sheets.

Zayn winces when he pushes all the way in, wriggles on the sheets like he’s not quite comfortable and Liam pauses on a stroke with a hand cupping a sharp cheek.

“Still a little sore,” Zayn breathes, shaky.

“Yeah,” Liam nods, pulling out until the head is the only thing swallowed by that clenching hole.  “It’s like that every time, if I remember.  Never get used to it.”

“Want to,” Zayn huffs, craning his neck for a kiss.  “Wanna know what you feel like even when you’re not there.”

Liam lets out a harsh breath and traps Zayn’s wrists against the sheets to rock into him.  He stares down at this boy, _his boy_ , and alternates between furiously fast and comforting slow to drive Zayn mad.  He shoves back at those loud, loud reminders in his head –

  1. _Just a fuck.  This is nothing.  He’s not ready – you’re not ready_.



He times his hips to _‘we make love and then we fuck and then you give me my space’_ in the background.  The sunlight wavers over their bodies and highlights his tan skin, Zayn’s hints of gold, the unsteady smiles on their lips because, suddenly, they both know what this means.

They can both taste _‘goodbye’_ and it’s toxic, unrelenting.

He goes slow for a while, lets Zayn flex and stretch around the base of his dick with the head nudging against his prostate.  There’s breathy whimpers leaving Zayn’s lips, a complete distraction, a counter to _‘what I am trying to say is the love is ours to make so we should make it’_ in his ears.

Zayn tries to tug his hands free but Liam won’t let up.  He knows there’ll probably be bruises – a reminder, an _‘all mine’_ he sort of wants the world to see – so he kisses off Zayn’s mewls, his stuttered whines.  He pounds into him until the bed shakes, rattles along from its bolted positioning and Zayn curls a loose leg around his waist to keep him deep.

He finds Zayn with his eyes, the ruined look on his face, the overwhelming feeling in his eyes, the gradual roll of his hips to get more of Liam.  The sweat glossing their skin shines in morning light and the sheets slip lower, lower until the breeze catches on his bare arse and he loves the way Zayn balances sweet moans with dirty grinding.  They laugh into each other’s mouths and crowd _‘fuck yes keep going if you stop I will lose it’_ in the void until Liam drives deep and watches Zayn come just like that.

Without his hands, without tickling fingers around his cock or a warm mouth or anything but Liam fucking roughly against his prostate.

He pulls out quickly afterwards, soaks the sheets with dreamy white streaks rather than coming inside of Zayn because –

It’s too intimate.  It’s too becoming of a moment.  He’s never believed in those when between strange sheets.

With boys he can’t afford to keep this long.

He offers Zayn a smile when he rolls away but absolutely cannot drag himself closer to cuddle.  He twists his fingers in the sheets when Zayn presses a few to his pulse point and looks away, waits for the blinding sun to scar his retinas.  He waits until Zayn’s breathing slows and he’s asleep again, waiting on that hour.

 

|*|

 

And Liam’s waiting for this work of art to stop ruining his heart.

 

|*|

 

Liam doesn’t follow Zayn down the lift to the lobby for his cab.  He begs him off for a phone interview that doesn’t exist and forces a begrudging Louis to do it, instead.  He curls in on himself after that last kiss because it tasted like _‘see you later’_ but felt like _‘this was fantastic while it lasted’_ and he’s read a dozen articles about how to calm anxiety and hasn’t found a method that works properly yet.

But he tries, between the sheets that still smell like Zayn and are still sticky from the lube and their come.  Fuck, _he tries_.

|*|

 

He doesn’t see Zayn for two weeks after that, busies himself with nightly shows and morning workout routines and afternoon kips to pass the time.

The week break they get from the tour, he mostly spends sleeping off exhaustion and regular evening trips to that over-the-top club that Zayn’s not quite old enough to get in.  He spares a few phone calls that never really last long and end abruptly.  He’s not doing it intentionally – or maybe he is – so he settles for sending drunk text messages during the thumping music and extra-strong cocktails with words he can regret in the morning after a hangover.

 _Guilty_ is what he feels.

A _coward_ is what he repeats to himself, angrily, in the mirror when the calls become less frequent and the texts too far apart.  He doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the red-rimmed color of his eyes or the sadness he can hear echoing from the other line of the phone when Zayn begs for a visit before Liam’s early morning flight.

Liam refuses and scars his knuckles against his bedroom wall to subdue the whimpers in his chest.

 

|*|

 

When he and Danielle ended things, he told everyone it was amicable after a night of swallowing sour tequila and crying through a marathon of _Friends_ episodes.

They all gave him sympathetic looks, warm hugs, a lack of space, and the occasional _‘cheer up, Leeymo, you’re worth more’_ that wasn’t meant to be condescending but it felt that way.

Everyone but Niall.

He thinks that’s why, in hindsight, he should expect this.  He should’ve predicted Niall striding up to him after a sound check and backstage where everything is a little louder and far more distracting.  Niall kicks him, hard, in one of those practiced moves from far too many days on the pitch.

“Oi, Niall, what the – “

“I liked him,” Niall scowls, arms folded.

Liam sighs loudly.  He knew this was coming.  He’d been waiting on it for days, from Louis, maybe Harry, not Niall.  Not gentle, kind, unmistakably buzzed off his arse Niall.

Niall, in the absence of words between them, kicks him again.

Liam jerks away and can’t grasp an angered look when Niall’s eyes turn from hard to doomed, ruined.  He’s got something like a frown pulling at his pink lips and Liam, immediately, feels like cuddling him even though he’s not the one with the broken –

“I liked him and you go mucking it up,” Niall sighs, tangling fingers in his already destroyed hair.

“Nialler,” Liam pleads.

Niall shakes his head quickly, a stubbornness he adopted from Louis over the years.  “You’re an arsehole and ye shouldn’t be that way with your boyfriend.”

Liam gasps a little, his brow wrinkled.  “He’s not my – “

“He _is_ your boyfriend,” Niall argues.  “Quit being daft and say it.”

Liam swallows, blinks wildly at Niall and he’s wearing that serious expression he only puts on for Premier League games and battles with Harry over the last of the chocolate ice cream.

“Say it _Liam James Payne_ ,” he hisses and Liam flinches at his tone.

“Fuck, I don’t know what we are,” Liam barks back, waits for Louis to peek his head in the room with that _‘are we okay should I call Paul now or after you slaughter each other because I want to watch’_ look on his face before he schools his breathing again.

Niall, a little gentler, moves in a step more, dropping a hand on Liam’s shoulder.  This, Liam knows, isn’t belittling.  It’s genuine.  It’s _Niall_.

“He’s your boyfriend, Li.  It’s okay to say it,” Niall whispers and Liam almost repeats him.  “And you go around avoiding it because you can’t afford to get hurt like with that whore – “

Liam groans, drops his chin.  “She’s not a whore, Ni.”

“Anyone who hurts you is a whore.  And a fuck-twit,” Niall declares, his chest puffed out, his chin strong.

Liam soaks in a laugh, reels his head back to offer Niall a grin.  “You’ve been hanging around Tommo too much.”

“And you’ve been reading too many articles in _Arsehole Monthly_ ,” Niall fights back with a bigger smile.  He nudges Liam with his foot this time, still intentional, still demanding, before adding, “I like him so quit fucking about and fix it.  Fix _him_ because he was already broken enough.”

He stomps off and plops into Harry’s lap to steal scoops of a brownie sundae and Liam stares at the blank wall in front of him.  He stares at nothing and that’s all he was after Danielle, right?

It’s all he was at the stupid Chinese takeaway restaurant and three minutes before noticing Zayn and six seconds after his phone stopped buzzing.

But with that boy, that soon-to-be man, he was _something_.  Something for someone.  The lucky one, maybe.

 

|*|

 

The large, wide ocean-grey sky hanging over Greenwich, with its overlapping pewter clouds and foggy glimpses of the sun, feels foreign to him.  He’s not familiar with this side of London but he recognizes a brown brick house nestled between two freshly coated yellow ones without trying.  The wooden front steps creak like old floorboards in attics when he climbs them and the ring of the bell is weak like an evening bird’s call but he can already smell the fresh spices and sweet golden apples – _like autumn_ , he thinks, distantly with a smile – behind the door before it swings open.

Liam drags the shiny Aviators from his eyes, fumbles one of those sincere smiles that pushes up his cheeks and drags his lips wide, fingers pressed to the nape of his neck like –

Like a shy seventeen year old under the gaze of a million watchful eyes.

Except he’s only being stared at by one pair of eyes, attached to a smaller girl with thick, dark hair drawn up in a messy ponytail and her cherry lips are quirked half-like Zayn’s are when he finds something stupidly comical and her cheeks are sharp like his, eyes a little wider.

“Hey,” he chokes out, trying to squeeze the tension from his tendons through his fingers, “I’m Liam and I’m looking for – “

There’s a pause.  A moment he’s seen too often.  That slow realization and then –

“Wait, you _can’t_ – like, are you serious?  Shut the fu – “

“Waliyha!”

The girl jolts a little, jerks her head over her shoulder and she’s quickly being tugged back into a pair of broader arms.  Liam grins, leans in the doorway with the soft patter of rain behind him and a slightly taller girl hauling Waliyha into a half-gentle embrace.

“Excuse her, she’s a little bit – “

Another hush of silence and Liam ducks his head immediately, looking up through his eyelashes, teeth pressing down on his bottom lip.  He knows her immediately from the photos on Zayn’s phone, on his Twitter feed.  Her choppy hair is twisted over one shoulder, broad eyes that brilliant contrast between autumn browns and greens.  She’s got shiny red lips, softer cheekbones, a tender complexion to her skin.

“Doniya,” Liam says with a heavy exhale, something sinking the taut grip on his bones.

She blinks large, large eyes at him, sucking in a sharp breath.  Her fingers go tight around Waliyha’s forearms and her next breath comes out in little heartbeats.

“Holy fuck.”

“Doni,” Waliyha whines, blindly elbowing her sister while still staring at Liam.

Liam giggles quietly, drags his boots over the beat-up carpet in the foyer and Doniya rocks on her heels for a long beat before she says, “The little shit is – I mean, _wow_.  You.  It’s really _you_.  I sorted you realized you were, I dunno, making a mistake or actually realized that maybe he’s just – “

Liam clears his throat, straightens a little with this constant mid-tempo pulse to his heart.  He chews a bruise into his lip and shakes his head quickly, dragging his hands over his jeans to wipe away the sweat.  There’s something awful tied in ridiculous knots around his stomach and he wants to tell her _she’s wrong_.  He wants to tell the entire world.

But first –

“Is he here?” he inquires, a hope in his voice that he thinks she can see because something warm tugs at her lips.

“There’s a shiny black car with a stroppy security guard standing outside.  I’m sure if he didn’t notice, the neighbors are gossipy enough to draw his attention,” she teases, cocking her head back when they both hear footfalls against the whitewashed wood steps behind her.

They’re noisy like the ones out front, the banister a little shaky when a hand curls around it and Doniya winks at him before struggling to drag Waliyha in the opposite direction.  Their voices are muted screams and childish giggles Liam’s heard a hundred times in various countries but they’re not enough of a distraction when he finally sees _Zayn_ –

He almost, almost meets him halfway, stumbling to the bottom step just to catch up with his heart.  Zayn’s got a dreadful beanie Harry bought him somewhere along their countryside petrol stops half-cocked on his head with his fringe drug up into the beginnings of a bedhead quiff.  He’s tugging at a sugary pink lip with his teeth, the underside of his chin smattered with stubble.  His jeans hang loose on his lips, the cuffs swallowing his feet to the toes and all of his ink is hidden behind a baggy Katy Perry jumper he stole from Niall’s suitcase.

There’s a little more definition in his cheeks now and _three whole weeks_ Liam thinks between breaths when Zayn reaches the bottom step, when they’re almost at the same height and he can almost hear the unsteady push of Zayn’s heart over his already loud one.

“Hi,” Liam says, his throat clipping the word.

Zayn tightens his jaw to spare his smile but his lips move in this loose drag that Liam’s missed.

He watches the boy swallow, watches the tension captured in his muscles and his bones and all of his joints slowly relax when Liam hesitantly lifts a hand to brush fingers along Zayn’s hip.

“I’m sorry – “

Something rattles in Zayn’s throat and Liam _feels_ it, doesn’t intend to.  But it’s there – in wide eyes that beg Liam to _stop_ and his lips move _like it’s not necessary_ is there but he never says it.

He just stares at Liam, shaking his head.

“Is it too soon,” Zayn chokes, a crooked smile on his lips when Liam finally breathes properly, “to say I’ve missed you?”

Liam snorts, bites tenderly at his lip this time while brushing his knuckles under Zayn’s jumper.

“It’s sort of cheesy, don’t you think?” Liam teases, squeezing around a tremble when he feels the bare, warm flesh under the thick cotton hiding Zayn’s torso.

Zayn half-shrugs in this careless manner that’s not quite him.  Not the boy Liam remembers from across hotel beds and asleep on his shoulder and laughing into his neck backstage.  Not the Zayn who whispered _‘don’t you forget about me I’ll be alone dancing you know it baby’_ with a long stretch of road ahead of them and the world falling behind.

He can see Doniya and Waliyha watching from around the corner, shoulders going a little tight until he looks up at the blush already smudged across Zayn’s cheeks.

And, this time, he knows he needs to be brave because Zayn just _can’t_.

“I was wondering,” Liam says with a dragging voice, still uncertain until Zayn blinks up and all of the strength he’s been sparing straightens his spine and his lips quirk into an irrepressible smile, “I was _hoping_ maybe you would accompany me to this little Chinese takeaway place I know near the city?”

He studies Zayn for one long breathy and waits – no, _hopes_ – until Zayn beams at him like this is a first –

And it is, for him.  It’s a first and a next and _a possibly for the rest of our lives_ but it’s a little too soon to say things like that, so instead –

“The lads are waiting down there for me,” Liam adds, closing the gap with his fingers freeing from their twist around Zayn’s jumper to cup his cheek, stretch toward the piercing in his cartilage to cool the fire in his blood before he grins, “and you too.”

Zayn laughs breathily, pushes his cheek into Liam’s palm.  It’s the first time Liam watches all of the vulnerability chip away like fragilely blown glass.  The sting wears off and there’s something inescapably affectionate behind Zayn’s eyelashes.

It builds the little courage behind Liam’s ribcage until he’s right there, chests almost touching and the water’s not too deep this time.  No, it’s lapping at their feet and swaying with their smiles and he wonders when _Zayn_ taught him how to float rather than swim against the current.

“And, if you’re okay with it,” Liam starts, stronger now, “The lads and my family are throwing me a birthday gathering in a few weeks.  Some posh restaurant or summat.  There’ll be loads of paps and press watching, I’m sure – “

He swallows, waits for the armor to fall away and when Zayn holds a breath firm in his chest, he smiles at him.

“And I’d quite like it if I had my boyfriend there with me to, y’know, see all of it and maybe meet me parents too,” he finishes, eyes crinkling and lips barely containing giggles when Zayn’s eyes spark like crashing stars.

“Oh Christ, already, just take him back,” Doniya swoons from a few meters away and Waliyha’s biting mercilessly at her own lip and, from a distance, he can see Safaa peaking over a tattered leather couch with hopefully beautiful, wide lilac eyes that Liam knows he won’t soon forget.

There’s an apprehensive shake to Zayn’s hand when he lifts it but his fingers go warmly to Liam’s hair and they don’t kiss – _not yet_ – but they draw a little close until their noses bump and the world stops just for them.

“I thought – like, I thought about saying this a hundred times, y’know, to you but,” Zayn stumbles, licking at dry lips and pressing his forehead to Liam’s.  The words are guarded in his throat but Liam already knows what they are.

He’s been repeating them in the bathroom mirror of his flat all morning, trying to weigh them over his tongue and feel the way they caress the roof of his mouth.

Liam chuckles, drags sure fingers across the thick hairs on the nape of Zayn’s neck.

“Seems appropriate that we wait,” Liam suggests in this shamelessly breathy voice that drags a whine from Zayn’s throat.  He smirks, cocky like he remembers Zayn being, “You might’ve survived meeting the boys but me sisters are monsters when it comes to someone I’m, y’know, seeing or dating.  And my mum is quite chatty.  You might not love me after that.”

Zayn snickers, muffles the sound against Liam’s birthmark and he tugs Zayn off the steps and into the foyer while his sisters gather around.  He whispers a _‘but even then, I’m sure I’ll love you boy wonder’_ into Zayn’s hair with a lopsided grin and ignores the hitch in Zayn’s breath to pull all of his sisters into a hug and pose for pictures on Waliyha’s phone.

They flood him with questions until his cheeks ache from the grins and are permanently tarnished pink.  There’s promises of meeting Zayn’s parents, later, and he doesn’t bother to answer the six missed calls from Louis while snapping off selfies with Waliyha or grinning against Zayn’s cheek when they request a few alone photos on Liam’s phone.

He keeps his fingers twisted around Zayn’s the entire time and leaves all of the broken rules under his feet when he drags Zayn by the collar to the waiting car.  He kisses him slowly in the back seat with the world passing by the windows and Zayn whispers words that are far too promising for his age into his ear until Liam feels seventeen and so ready to give this boy his heart.

And repeating _‘I love you boy wonder’_ over and over becomes the only non-negotiable rule he refuses to break.

**Author's Note:**

> Was it bad? I apologize for the ending... I just couldn't put together _how_ or _where_ I wanted to end it. But, hopefully, it's readable. And I know I should've delved more into Zayn's parents and him being young and the dynamics surrounding that but, really, I just wanted to write a love story about someone's first love... and another person's unexpected love. All of the rest feels secondary to the main plot, sorry :(
> 
> Thank you for all of the kudos and comments on the last fic. I know this won't be liked by everyone but it really was a fun thing to write and helped calm me through some other personal issues. And this is for _you_ , reader, because you never make me feel awkward about this thing I do. You make me feel like a _"boy wonder."_


End file.
